It would be useful for the donor child themselves ("private banking") only under exceptionally unlikely circumstances, like them getting a leukemia subtype where autologous cells are beneficial while they're still young enough for that kind of treatment.  Much more likely is it useful for another child requiring a partially matched treatment ("public banking"). 

If the donor child have mutation which can cause leukemia, the umbilical cord blood are useless. 

If the donor child is healthy, he may not use it. The healthy donor can help other children.

So I think  it is useless  for individual, while it can work as public banking.  

That is why i think government should pay for it not individual.

Thanks for the inputs, even I feel so. Mostly because if the child has some genetic defect then his own cells are useless to him. Also, how likely is a sibling/parent match? If it is just as likely as that available through public banks, then is what is the whole point/? Also, I heard that the amount of cells that can be retrieved from one blood sample is not sufficient and you might have to approach a public bank anyway- is that true?

I have a question...If stem cells are readily retrievable from almost all of the adult tissues as well, many of them being an excellent source, why do we need to bank them? Also, how can we guarantee their viability in the time of need, say, after several years in Liquid N2.

Hi Pallavi, the viability of stem cells after all those years of storage in liq N2 is something that a lot of scientists are concerned about. As far as the adult stem cells vs cord blood cells are concerned, the tolerance of HLA mismatch is much higher in the latter. Also, there is a decreased rate of graft rejection in cord blood cells. 

Hello

This verey important issue and we should be asking what else might be achieved using cord blood stem cell treatments, and how we can attain these goals .

Good Luck

@  Madhurima:

Your are totally right with the better tolerability of unmatched cord stem cells. So the use for foreign patients is a promising therapy for blood diseases, for the reconstitution of bone marrow after high-dose chemotherapy or immune deficiencies is essential.

So far, about 4.5 million umbilical cord blood preparations worldwide have been processed for long-term storage as a result of parents’ private initiative. Today we know, that about 90 percent of all umbilical cord bloods stored for autologous application and applied all over the world were used in regenerative medicine and not in hematopoetic fields. So the private banking is a forward-looking possibility to help to ensure childs health.

You also asked for the amount of cells and of cause te volume of umbilical cord blood collected may vary greatly. One must keep in mind though that as much as the potential areas of application are diverse, as much differ the transplant requirements, so that the cell quantity that is needed may differ too. If the number of nucleated cells extracted from the umbilical cord blood is not sufficient for certain applications according to the state of knowledge, then there are alternatives. On the one hand, doctors have in general the possibility to use additional stem cell sources (e.g. bone marrow), which is actually done in practice at present. On the other hand, there are methods of proliferating the extracted hematologic stem cells.