Our programs for low- and middle-income countriesImproving the situation of patients living in low- and middle-income countries
Access To Treatment offers several programs for low- and middle-income countries. Our activities to facilitate access to treatment cover three main areas: patient funding, HLA typing and capacity building.We help, where help is needed
Giving hope for a healthy future: The DKMS Patient Funding Program
A program to lessen the financial barriers of transplantation: This program intends to facilitate access to transplantation by contributing to the costs of the blood stem cell transplantation for patients who would otherwise not receive treatment.
We closely cooperate with other non-profit organizations by contributing towards the cost of stem cell transplantation for patients who would otherwise not receive adequate treatment. Our collaboration partners have a proven track record of low-cost and high-quality transplantation. Further, patients and their relatives receive assistance in searching for other funding sources to cover the treatment and related costs. If required, the concerned NGOs may even waive any financial contribution from the families.
An example of our DKMS Patient Funding Program is in India, where it has been in place since 2018. During this time, we have been collaborating with the nonprofit organizations Cure2Children and Sankalp India Foundation. These organizations seek to facilitate access, for children in low-income countries, to affordable and reliable local medical treatment for life-threatening blood disorders. Ultimately, their goal is to cure them. They are also particularly committed to easing the burden of thalassemia, carrying out stem cell transplants on a non-profit basis in two centers in India since 2015.
Through our DKMS Patient Funding Program we have supported more than 1,700 transplantations in different low and middle income countries.
Finding the perfect match: The DKMS Free HLA Typing Program
A program to identify family donors by covering HLA typing costs for patients in need of a transplant and their family members. We also support unrelated donor searches for patients who do not find a suitable family donor.
Within our Free HLA Typing Program we are working in close collaboration with transplant centers and other non-profit organizations that pursue the same life-saving cause as us in countries with limited resources by covering HLA typing costs involved in identifying family donors.
An example of such assistance is the so-called “thalassemia camps” in India. More than 10,000 children are born with this condition every year in India alone, resulting in an extremely high need for transplants. DKMS cooperates with local NGOs and transplantation clinics that organize events where pediatric thalassemia patients and their siblings provide buccal swab samples for HLA typing. DKMS covers the costs of the typing. The samples from the camps, which many families travel a significant distance to reach, are analyzed in our high-throughput laboratory, the DKMS Life Science Lab in Dresden, and clinical matching reports are provided. In cases where there is no matching sibling for a sick child, there still remains some hope that an unrelated donor might be a match or that a haploidentical transplantation (half-matched related donor such as a parent) is a feasible alternative. A publication about the scope and impact of the program is available in the Pediatric Hematology Oncology Journal.
So far, our laboratory has typed over 81,000 samples under the DKMS Free HLA Typing Program. We were able to identify over 5,900 potential family donors leading to more than 2,300 second chances at life.
Finding the perfect match: The DKMS Free HLA Typing Program
A program to identify family donors by covering HLA typing costs for patients in need of a transplant and their family members. We also support unrelated donor searches for patients who do not find a suitable family donor.
Within our Free HLA Typing Program we are working in close collaboration with transplant centers and other non-profit organizations that pursue the same life-saving cause as us in countries with limited resources by covering HLA typing costs involved in identifying family donors.
An example of such assistance is the so-called “thalassemia camps” in India. More than 10,000 children are born with this condition every year in India alone, resulting in an extremely high need for transplants. DKMS cooperates with local NGOs and transplantation clinics that organize events where pediatric thalassemia patients and their siblings provide buccal swab samples for HLA typing. DKMS covers the costs of the typing. The samples from the camps, which many families travel a significant distance to reach, are analyzed in our high-throughput laboratory, the DKMS Life Science Lab in Dresden, and clinical matching reports are provided. In cases where there is no matching sibling for a sick child, there still remains some hope that an unrelated donor might be a match or that a haploidentical transplantation (half-matched related donor such as a parent) is a feasible alternative. A publication about the scope and impact of the program is available in the Pediatric Hematology Oncology Journal.
So far, our laboratory has typed over 81,000 samples under the DKMS Free HLA Typing Program. We were able to identify over 5,900 potential family donors leading to more than 2,300 second chances at life.
Empowering a better tomorrow: The DKMS Capacity Building Program
A program to advance treatment and care through infrastructural support and knowledge sharing: This program focuses on making a sustainable contribution towards the enhancement of high-quality and affordable hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. This comprises funding for non-profit hospitals and organizations in countries with a shortage of resources, to help them deliver appropriate treatment as well as training for physicians and nurses to advance the level of care.
Such engagement in terms of enhancing capacities at hospitals is demonstrated by our collaboration with the non-profit organization Sankalp India Foundation. Currently, Sankalp carries out blood stem cell transplants at two centers in India, Ahmedabad and Bangalore. The BMJH-Sankalp Bone Marrow Transplant Unit in Bangalore was launched in memory of Mechtild Harf in 2021. We funded 17 of the 20 specialized rooms, primarily serving thalassemia patients. The Ahmedabad center, also dedicated to Mechtild Harf, was inaugurated in February 2025 with 10 specialized rooms. As of 2026 the BMJH-Sankalp center has become the first center in India to achieve JACIE certification highlighting the success of the affordable high quality transplantation approach. For more information read here.
Through the collaboration with local non-profits, we aim to increase the capacity for cost-effective, high-quality transplantations, providing treatment for patients who might otherwise not afford it.
Since 2024 within the framework of our BMT Start-up Program we have supported Hue Central Hospital in Vietnam in developing a BMT program to provide curative transplantation to children with transfusion dependent thalassemia. Our support was two-fold consisting of infrastructural support by converting available space into BMT rooms and knowledge transfer through the advice of a consulting pediatric hemato-oncologist and further training of medical staff.
Qualified medical staff is essential for ensuring excellent patient care. To address this, we actively support knowledge transfer and the training of doctors and specialized nursing staff. A cornerstone of this engagement is our DKMS Scholarship. It assists medical and non-medical personnel from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) working in hematology and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Our financial support allows professionals to develop specialist expertise by taking part in individually chosen programs, such as theoretical courses, practical observerships or a combination of both.
In addition to running our own scholarship program, we also support external education and training initiatives for healthcare professionals. For example, DKMS supports the EBMT Middle-income Countries Pediatric Advanced Care Training (EMPACT) Program. The training provides pediatric blood and marrow transplantation training for nurses and from middle-income regions.
The educational program is financed by DKMS, organized by Cure2Children, and endorsed by the Outreach Subcommittee of the Paediatric Diseases Working Party - EBMT.
The program consists of two streams of education:
- Tier 1 (comprising BMT nurses from more experienced LMIC centers):
A two-year hematopoietic cell transplantation training course for nurses from Middle-Income Countries (MICs) with the aim to ensure the acquisition of Advanced Practice Providers (APP) hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) core competencies as defined by FACT/JACIE standards 7th edition. - Tier 2 (comprising nurses from active or emerging LMIC centers):
A one-year hematopoietic cell transplantation training course for nurses from Middle-Income Countries (MICs) with the opportunity to acquire Advanced Practice Providers (APP) hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) core competencies as defined by FACT/JACIE standards 7th edition. Tier 2 participants will be able to freely participate in Tier 1 training activities but will not be expected to be formally evaluated as APP trainees. The educational approach will be based around structured online learning combined with practical skill development and case based discussions.
Last updated: 1.10.2026