Donating umbilical cord blood
If you are giving birth at UZ Leuven, you can consider donating your umbilical cord blood to help save a life.
Completely safe and painless for you and your baby
The process to collect umbilical cord blood is completely safe and painless for you and your baby.
Taking away umbilical cord blood is completely safe and painless for you and your baby.
- After the umbilical cord is cut, the umbilical cord is punctured.
- The midwife or gynaecologist will take the blood from the umbilical cord.
- Your baby does not get jabbed.
- We will collect a blood sample of the mother to check for infections.
Donating umbilical cord is of course free of charge.
In the umbilical cord blood bank the stem cells are removed from the umbilical cord blood.
These stem cells are put in the deep freezer and stored anonymously.
Your personal details will never be passed on to the donor or the hospital.
Our daughter had no chance of survival without that stem cell transplant. I had heard of the umbilical cord blood bank before, but had not given it much thought. Now that I am involved, I want to tell every pregnant woman, ‘Just sign to donate your umbilical cord blood.’
More information
About us
The Leuven Cord Blood Bank is publicly accessible and free. The donated samples are stored at no cost to the donor and are available anonymously on the basis of solidarity to any patient, anywhere in the world, provided that sufficient tissue compatibility can be demonstrated.
The umbilical cord blood is stored at -196 °C for at least 20 years, so it will be available for blood disorder patients across the globe.
To ensure safe transplantation and prevent rejection, the donor’s cord-blood stem cells must be as compatible as possible with the recipient's cells. Therefore, numerous donations are necessary if every sick patient is to find a donor.
For maternity clinics
View extra documents and information material for maternity clinics (accessible only with a password).