The Gift of Healing: Mothers Saves Lives

Dec 20, 2023

BY HANNAH GOLDFINGER

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OPELIKA —

East Alabama Health is celebrating mothers who donate birth tissue to those in need.

The hospital held a “Gift of Healing Celebration Ceremony” on Aug. 24 in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at East Alabama Medical Center.

This opportunity for mothers to donate tissue began in 2017 when EAH partnered with telaGen.

“telaGen provides support and education for donor mothers on the impact that birth tissue donation can have, as well as handles the screening, storage and distribution of the tissue,” said a press release from EAH.

More than 1,100 mothers have donated since 2017.

“I think it’s so important that we acknowledge that since 2017, [there have been] over 1,000 donations by moms,” said Laura Grill, president and CEO of EAH, at the ceremony. “ … I think it’s just awesome when we can see something like this and how that whole circle comes to fruition, and so now we can take advantage of that in our wound center and help those patients through this service and [these] products. And really just lastly, just want to acknowledge … all our obstetricians have really supported this program and our labor and delivery staff just tremendously. So, it takes a lot of teamwork and I’m very thankful that we have that here.”

The tissue, the placenta, is taken from mothers who give birth by C-section and it is used for wound care patients — the donations can help up to 50 people.

“Over 1,000 donations in the course of six years here, [is] very exciting,” said David Hill, CEO of telaGen and Synergy Biologics, at the ceremony. “We started telaGen about a decade ago … and when we started, we just wanted to be the best birth tissue recovery organization out there. And really what we wanted to do is try to match the gift of donation that the moms were making … We need to honor that gift of donation, too, by giving back to the community and so that’s what we started to do. We have championed OBGYNs like Dr. Marino, Dr. Obiekwe, Dr. Fields, the rest of the OBGYNs are our champions. And we decided to make it programmatic to where everybody’s involved and to where every donation that’s supported by the OBGYN, and the staff, the administration, that we would match that back to a charitable organization in the community.

“So, fast forward 10 years and we’ve given back over $1.5 million to over a hundred different charities, so many different communities, we’re in 50 plus hospitals across the nation, we’re the largest birth tissue recovery organization in the nation and we couldn’t have done it without the partnership that we have with hospitals like East Alabama Health.”

Synergy Biologics takes the placenta and turns it into amniotic tissue which can be used for skin grafts, treatment of burns, gum disease, surgical procedures and more.

“Essentially what you’re doing is your putting those regenerative proteins anywhere on the body and it’s going to regenerate health functional tissue,” Hill said in the press release.

Dr. Robert Marion, OBGYN with EAH said that telaGen makes the process “seamless”.

One of the mothers who has participated in this program at EAH was actually a treated infant herself. She attended the ceremony and shared a bit more about her story.

Stacy Zehner was born without skin on her legs — epidermolysis bulls simplex — and her mother gave her tissue. Zehner, now a mother herself, donated her placenta at EAH.

“I wanted to be able to help people, especially if their kid is born with no skin or anything like that,” she said during the ceremony.

One of the themes of the event was that these donations are “full-circle”.

“We talk about a full circle of mom’s donation of the birth tissue and then it goes all the way back around into the community to help heal a non-healing wound, a burn, etc.,” Hill said at the ceremony. “So we’re very proud of what East Alabama Health has done … We’re trying to come in as a low-cost alternative for patients that wouldn’t normally have access to this regenerative tissue.”

Hill also thanked Zehner for her donation, and her daughter Paisley.

Only a small percentage of mothers in the nation currently donate, though the need for the tissue is high.

Heather Bayles, manager of the Wound Treatment Center at EAH, said in the release, that part of the goal of using the tissue is pain management and faster healing.

“We are very blessed to have telaGen and Synergy here,” she said at the ceremony. “What it means to our patients is that you have patients in our community, they have these wounds that they have had for years. We have patients that they become our family because we see them every week for the same wound over and over again. And when I tell you these patients are our family — they are. And so to hear that we have a product that can help these patients be able to get back out into the community, these patients who can get out and get back to church and these patients who can go watch their grandkids play a sport, it’s huge and it means a lot to us.”