Cordlife accepts MOH notice on licence change to resume cord-blood banking services

SINGAPORE - Cordlife has accepted a notice from the Ministry of Health (MOH) regarding changes to its cord-blood banking service licence, in a bid to resume its cord-blood banking service.

The embattled cord blood bank will not collect, test, process and/or store more than 30 units per month of new cord blood from infant donors from Sept 15 to Jan 13, 2025, unless sooner approved by the director-general of health, it said on Sept 6.

MOH on Aug 29 said the cord blood bank

will be allowed to resume cord-blood banking services

“in a controlled manner” from Sept 15. But to safeguard the interests of customers, it will not be allowed to collect, test, process and/or store more than 30 units of new cord blood each month, from Sept 15 to Jan 13, 2025.

While MOH’s notice was pending Cordlife’s written representations, Cordlife said on Sept 6 that it will not be submitting written representations.

Cordlife was told to stop the collection, testing, processing and/or storage of new cord blood for a period of six months from Dec 15, 2023. This came after MOH said seven of Cordlife’s 22 tanks had been exposed to temperatures above acceptable limits at different periods from November 2020.

After six months, the suspension was extended by an additional three months on June 15 for Cord­life to complete the validation of its new cord-blood processing method.

Follow-up audits by MOH showed that Cordlife had met the essential requirements to resume its provision of cord-blood banking services, MOH said in August.

Cordlife expects that the announcement will continue to have a negative financial impact on its financial year ending Dec 31, 2024, given that it is unable to resume full operations.

Shares of Cordlife closed 3.7 per cent or $0.005 higher at $0.14 on Sept 6, before the announcement.

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