"40 years have passed like a day".

Well, no. A lot has happened and it would take a long time to tell the story. How to measure these thousands of saved human lives? Last year alone, more than 2,000 hematopoietic cell transplants were performed in Poland and there is already a city of people saved by this method. And it just started 40 years ago on 28.11.1984. 40 years ago the first allogeneic bone marrow transplantation was performed in Poland. The donor for Ola, who suffered from congenital lack of red blood cells, was her four-year-old sister Kasia.

Unique about this procedure were several things. First, it was an immediately successful procedure and the cured patient is still alive today, produces "Kasine" red blood cells and has not required any transfusions since. Earlier in the world, this was not the case, so that there was no so-called "learning curve" and the first treatment was immediately successful. Secondly, it wasn't that the team members went somewhere abroad, learned and transferred the technology to Poland. They didn't. No one on the team that performed the procedure had seen it before, but it was preceded by years of preparation, research on mice and the development of methods to guide patients free of resistance. Rarely has a medical technology of this complexity been produced from scratch in Poland. After the first procedure, 8 more were performed, and three people are still alive today, proving that it is possible to survive for many years indeed after this procedure. In 1987, by administrative decision, the team that performed it was disbanded (to this day the reasons are unclear) but, to tell the truth, its members were not punished.

After the liquidation, the team published for general use the details of the developed method, which probably helped other Polish teams to take up their activities years later, and the team members had to somehow find their way in the new situation. The list of their other subsequent achievements is long. Only some returned to bone marrow transplantation years later, but then 40 years ago the "avalanche started," and today Polish patients' access to this method of treatment is complete, and Polish specialists play a significant role in its further development worldwide.