Christiana Care Health System Partners with CORD:USE to help New Mothers Donate their Newborn's Cord Blood

NEWARK, Del., July 31, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Christiana Care Health System has partnered with CORD:USE, the nation's foremost cord blood banking organization, to ensure that mothers are educated and provided a safe and effective way to donate their babies' cord blood. This cord blood is used for treating patients with life-threatening diseases and in biomedical research.

To date, more than 70 different diseases are currently treated with umbilical cord blood stem cells such as leukemia, lymphoma and sickle cell anemia. While other health systems bank cord blood, Christiana Care is the only hospital system in the Philadelphia-area that partners with CORD:USE, the nation's leading cord blood banking organization.

"Our partnership with CORD:USE gives us the opportunity to honor the wishes of our new mothers and provide the medical field with innovative solutions to help find treatments for many diseases," said Richard Derman, M.D., MPH, Chair of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Christiana Care. "Thanks to this partnership, mothers and newborns now have the opportunity to give the gift of life and more lives will be saved from diseases thought to be incurable."

"It is an honor to work with Christiana Care, a health system that is nationally recognized as a top-tier hospital as well as a highly-regarded research center," said Ed Guindi, M.D., CEO of CORD:USE. "Through this partnership we will strengthen the National Cord Blood Inventory with needed cord blood units that can help save lives throughout the United States and around the world. The partnership will also allow us to provide our high quality family banking services to protect the cord blood for the expectant parents who choose to privately bank their babies' cord blood."

Christiana Care's new partnership enables the health system to provide more coordinated and better care for both new mothers and their newborns. The health system educates new mothers about their options of cord blood donation and family banking and coordinates donations. CORD:USE collects blood from within the donated umbilical cord – the part of the placenta that transports nutrients to a fetus – after a baby is born. CORD:USE prepares the cord blood and stores the stem cells  that eventually can be harnessed to treat diseases that require stem cell transplants.

The cord blood contains blood-forming stem cells that have the potential to treat diseases that require stem cell transplants.

"Christiana Care searched extensively nationwide for a program that had a strong leadership team and used the most advanced and effective shipping, processing and storage technologies in the field today," said Sherry Monson, vice president of Women's and Children's Services at Christiana Care. "We wanted a program that would have the strongest impact on saving lives – and that program is CORD:USE."

CORD:USE operates leading public and family cord blood banks. CORD:USE is directed by its team of the world leading cord blood scientists and physicians. CORD:USE Public Bank's cord blood units are distributed to transplanters, throughout the country and the world, as a critical component in their patients' treatment. CORD:USE Family Cord Blood Bank protects family banked cord blood units utilizing similar high-quality cord blood banking practices and technologies that are used in its leading public cord blood bank in its state-of-the-art laboratory. For more information, please visit www.corduse.com.

Christiana Care Health System, headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, is one of the country's largest health care providers, ranking 22nd in the nation for hospital admissions.

It is a major teaching hospital with two campuses and more than 250 Medical-Dental residents and fellows. Christiana Care is recognized as a regional center for excellence in cardiology, cancer and women's health services. The system is home to Delaware's only Level I trauma center, the only center of its kind between Philadelphia and Baltimore. Christiana Care also features a Level 3 neonatal intensive care unit, the only delivering hospital in the state to offer this level of care for newborns. U.S. News & World Report recently ranked Christiana Care's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology among the top 50 hospitals nationwide in the specialty of Gynecology.

For more information about Christiana Care, visit www.christianacare.org/whoweare.

SOURCE Christiana Care Health System