In a major breakthrough which would go a long way in cutting down medical costs of the patients with severe Hemophilia A and von Willebrand Disease (vWD,) the ICMR- National Institute of Immunohaematology (NIIH), Mumbai has developed a cost-effective point-of-care (POC) rapid diagnostic test for the blood disorders.

This would cost a patient less than Rs 50 in comparison to existing conventional test for the diseases that cost around Rs 4,000 to Rs 10,000. India has become the world’s first country to develop POC test for specific diagnosis of any common bleeding disorder, the ICMR has claimed

Haemophilia A and vWD are the commonest among bleeding disorders. As per the Western data, the incidence of Haemophilia A is 1 per 10,000 male births and that of vWD is around 1 per cent of the general population.

“In India, there is no epidemiological data and with translation of this data with respect to the population, the country may have roughly 80,000-1,00,000 severe haemophilia cases, but the total number registered with Haemophilia Federation India (HFI) is only around 19,000,” a senior official from the ICMR said.

At present, lack of awareness, lack of diagnostic facilities, high cost of tests are some of the factors for the underdiagnosis of bleeding disorders in the country.

“Both Haemophilia A and vWD are underdiagnosed disorders in our country and there are only a handful of comprehensive diagnostic centres for bleeding disorders,” the official said.

“The newly developed rapid test kit could be used for the diagnosis of undiagnosed patients/menorrhagia cases/ post-partum haemorrhage (PPH), gynaecological complications with bleeding history, recovery of factors in the transfused Haemophilia A patients and also for differential diagnosis of both the diseases,” the official said.