A young mother has taken it upon herself to introduce to Malta a service that could potentially save a child's life.

When Sylvana Brannon gave birth to her first daughter Eva, last year, she stored the baby's "adult" stem cells, taken from the blood of the umbilical cord, in a bank abroad. She reckons that these cells could one day be needed by the child or a close relative in the case of certain life-threatening illnesses.

A stem cell is an unspecialised cell that can produce mature specialised cells. Advances in stem cell research are happening all the time and there have already been claims that they are being successfully used as part of the treatment for childhood leukaemia and various forms of cancer. However, they are seen as having the potential to treat other serious diseases in future.

As Mrs Brannon waits patiently for her second child to be born, everything is prepared for her to collect stem cells from the blood of the umbilical cord of her newborn baby. Instead of throwing this blood away, new technology enables the extraction of stem cells which can be stored for a number of years. These are adult stem cells as opposed to embryonic stem cells.

"Together with breastfeeding, it is one of the biggest gifts I could give to my children," she said.

Late last week, the nine-month pregnant Mrs Brannon became the local representative of Smart Cells International, the firm where her daughter's stem cells are stored.

"I want other Maltese parents to be able to do the same thing we did and give their baby a health insurance for the future," she said.

Speaking to The Times yesterday, the day she was due to deliver her son, Mrs Brannon said she got interested in storing her future children's stem cells when she was living in Canada a few years ago.

"I came across a lot of information about cord blood collection, and when I became pregnant soon after we moved to Malta, I was adamant to try and do this for my baby."

Those who think that collecting the umbilical cord blood is a complicated procedure should think again. Mrs Brannon stressed that the procedure is a very easy one, and in fact her husband was all set to do it for their son.

"It does not interfere with the birth at all, because the collection takes place after the baby is born."

She explained that a few weeks before the due date, the bank sends the expectant mother a sterilised kit including everything needed to collect around 60 millilitres of blood, together with detailed information about how to go about it.

"Just after Eva was born, and the umbilical cord was cut, the midwife sterilised the cord and pricked it with a needle, which is attached to a sterilised bag. The blood is automatically collected in the bag," she said.

Mrs Brannon said the sealed bag was placed in a special package and was then sent by courier to the bank. A few days later she received an e-mail to inform her that the stem cell extraction had been successful.

Although at Lm850 the cost of extracting and storing stem cells for 25 years might seem like a lot of money, Mrs Brannon said in the long run this was a small price to pay.

"If something were to happen to one of my children later on in life, I would not want to think that I could have done something to save them.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There is a very small window of opportunity to give a child a health insurance for the future, and no way to go back once this is done."

Moreover, she pointed out that there are constant developments taking place in this field, adding that in a few years' time more life threatening problems could be cured using stem cells.

"I don't want to be in a position where research has moved forward and I do not have my children's stem cells to help them," she said.

Although stem cell research is surrounded by controversy because of its association with human embryos, Mrs Brannon pointed out that in this case the blood would have been thrown away.

Speaking to other Maltese mothers Mrs Brannon realised that there are those who did not know about the existence of the service while others who knew about it thought it was not possible to do it in Malta.

"Although I had found it easy to coordinate everything through e-mail and over the phone, it might be easier to deal with someone in Malta.

I called the company back and asked whether they were interested to open a branch here, and the answer was that if I was willing to be the local representative they did not have any problems," she said, adding that interested parents can contact her on 7957 6278 or sylvana@smartcellsmalta.com.