The Texas Cord Blood Bank (TCBB), announced Oct. 27 that it has begun collecting umbilical cord blood from Northeast Baptist Hospital.

Northeast Baptist is the 10th hospital in Texas, and the fourth one in San Antonio, to collect cord blood for the Texas Cord Blood Bank, a publicly and privately funded non-profit program established to create a public supply of umbilical cord blood.

“The program has been a great success at North Central Baptist, and we understand the importance of this service and wanted to make it available to as many of our patients as possible,” said Trip Pilgrim, Baptist Health System president and CEO.

“We plan to have more San Antonio Baptist Hospitals become part of the Texas Cord Blood Bank,” he added. “This partnership is critical to providing our community with a leading edge solution to combating a number of diseases. Our patients and families want and deserve to have an opportunity to be a part of that solution.”

TCBB, a division of the South Texas Blood and Tissue Center, is the state’s first public bank for umbilical cord blood. Although usually discarded after the birth of a healthy baby, umbilical cord blood is rich in blood- making cells that can be used to help patients with a number of conditions.

Cord blood cells can be life savers for those who need bone-marrow transplants, (people with lymphoma and leukemia); people with disorders of the blood-making system, such as sickle-cell anemia; severe immune-system disorders, neurological problems and genetic defects affect the blood-making system.

“Our dreams are becoming reality,” said Dr. Norman D. Kalmin, South Texas Blood and Tissue Center president, CEO and medical director. “TCBB has added 10 hospitals in three years and the list continues to grow. These partnerships have allowed us to begin supplying this life-saving resource to people of all ages and have made it possible to make a difference in the health of our children and our families.”

The Texas Cord Blood Bank now has 10 participating hospitals, including Southeast Baptist Hospital, Methodist and North Central Baptist hospitals in San Antonio, Doctors Hospital at Renaissance, Valley Baptist Medical Center-Harlingen and Valley Baptist Medical Center-Brownsville in the Rio Grande Valley, Medical City-Dallas Hospital, Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston and Christus Santa Rosa Hospital in New Braunfels.