Mr Chua Kheng Wee Louis asked the Minister for Health (a) whether the Ministry will assist customers whose cord blood units have been damaged while being stored by Cordlife with receiving a baseline level of compensation regardless of the type of service contract; (b) if so, how will this compensation be determined; and (c) if not, why not.
Mr Dennis Tan Lip Fong asked the Minister for Health whether the Ministry will consider strengthening the obligations of commercial cord blood banking service providers to include the requirement of a full refund of the initial contract fees or other earlier payments when these service providers are found to be responsible for any damage to cord blood units under their care, rendering such units unsuitable for stem cell transplant services.
Dr Janil Puthucheary: Sir, we understand the anxiety and concern amongst parents as a result of the lapses at Cordlife Group Limited (Cordlife). Cord blood banking is an elective, commercial service provided by the private sector. Customers entered into a commercial contract with the service providers when they sign up and the Ministry of Health (MOH) is not a party to these contracts. The Government cannot overstep the law. There are limits to which the Government can intervene, especially when it comes to issues of compensation and refunds.
What MOH is actively doing is with respect to regulation and facilitation. The Ministry will be supervising the proper completion of further tests in the affected tanks to achieve a high level of confidence in the findings. Given the sample sizes and the testing capacity available, this will take another year.
MOH will also closely monitor Cordlife’s dissemination of information to its customers and the public, as well as progress in addressing the deficiencies identified and in making improvements. These include directing Cordlife to properly validate and implement its new temperature monitoring system, revalidate its processing method for cord blood units and enhance staff training and supervision of its operations more closely.
MOH has also discussed with other providers who are prepared to facilitate transfer of their cord blood units. Parents who wish to do so can contact Cordlife and the receiving cord blood bank to discuss the transfer arrangements. That said, we urge parents to carefully consider the risks of doing so, given the logistical complexity of making a physical transfer at sub-zero temperatures, particularly so when the cord blood is not ascertained to be impacted.
Mr Speaker: Mr Dennis Tan.
Mr Dennis Tan Lip Fong (Hougang): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have two supplementary questions for the Senior Minister of State. A resident of mine wrote to me recently and informed me that she and her husband invested $12,000 from their children’s Child Development Account for the cord blood bank services. She said that they have been paying a premium for a service that has not met expectations and, had they been aware of the situation, they would have made very different choices today.
As general mid-working-class citizens, $12,000 is a significant amount of money for them. They shared that the current compensation offered by Cordlife, which includes a refund of the annual fee of $250 per year and the waiver of further fees going forward, is, unfortunately, not sufficient and it does not include the initial contract fee, hence, my initial Parliamentary Question (PQ). She told me that the token gesture does not address the fundamental issue at hand, which is the catastrophic failure of Cordlife’s services, which has irreversibly compromised the viability of their twins’ cord blood samples.
Sir, I would therefore like to ask the Government, to reconsider whether they can assist the affected person’s parents to obtain a higher level of compensation, including a refund of the initial contract fee. This is, given the quantum of claim and the likely legal costs involved, some parents may be deterred from engaging lawyers. I take the point that the Senior Minister of State has shared which is that, even if, indeed, it is the case that the company is not legally obliged to respond to any Government efforts, I wish the Government can engage the company on this front.
My second supplementary question is, moving forward, will the Government consider legislating a better protection regime for parents to recover all monies paid, including a refund to the CDA account for payments made when there are fundamental failures in the provision of blood cord services?
Dr Janil Puthucheary: Sir, I thank Mr Dennis Tan for his questions. If I understand the Member’s position with respect to his first supplementary question, he recognises and agrees that these are contractual matters between the parents and Cordlife. So, the role that we might play in the Government is to engage with Cordlife and ask them to facilitate some form of recompense to maintain their relationship with their customers. We continue to engage with Cordlife. But as the Member has agreed and as he has highlighted, this is a contractual matter between two private parties, and MOH and the Government are not a party to these contracts.
As for the Member’s second question about legislating further protection, I think we do have to study the regulatory lessons that have come out of this episode and to see whether or not such services need a further type of regulation. I would say that this is one operator amongst several and I think this is one incident in that operator. It does not automatically mean that the regulatory regime or the legislative framework is inherently wrong. It may be issues about operationalising it and auditing it. But, nevertheless, we will study this episode to see how we can make sure that there is confidence in the industry, going forward.
Mr Speaker: Mr Louis Chua.
Mr Chua Kheng Wee Louis (Sengkang): Thank you, Speaker. Just one supplementary question for the Senior Minister of State. I note in the press release by Cordlife yesterday that they mentioned the remaining five tanks are deemed to be so-called “low risk” in terms of the viability of the cord blood units there. In the testing that the Senior Minister of State mentioned, this one-year period, does it involve comprehensive testing of all the various tanks and units that are stored within Cordlife, and at the same time, also in the operational processes, to give parents the assurance that there is indeed a low risk of the remaining cord blood units being affected and so that there is greater confidence as to any potential future lapses by having this independent third-party audit of Cordlife’s assurances?
Dr Janil Puthucheary: Sir, the short answer is yes. The entire process is designed to provide a high level of confidence in the findings, to make sure that Cordlife themselves can demonstrate that they are doing the right thing and moving in the right direction to improve protections, and for confidence in the industry as a whole to be shored up. So, the short answer is yes.
He had a specific question on the five tanks that were in the report. I do not have the information about exactly where those five tanks are in our overall assessment and the one-year timeline. If he would like to, I can follow up with him separately on this.
Ministry of Health
8 May 2024
https://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/#/sprs3topic?reportid=oral-answer-3592
Office of the Leader of the Opposition 