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Umbilical cord blood banking is simply the storing of cord blood in cord blood banks.  The umbilical cord banks became popular in the 1990s. Today, we have two types of cord blood banks.  They are the private and public cord blood banks. Whichever a mother chooses depends on whether she needs the cord blood to be at the family disposal or not. Private Banks charge fees for storing cord blood for families and public blood banks are always at hand looking for donors.

For a unit to be accepted into a public registry, regulations in some countries require that it must be screened and found to be safe for those in need. Plus, the expectant mother must make up her mind and make her desire of donating the umbilical cord blood public before her 34^th week of pregnancy.

The two sources of cord blood are the placenta and the umbilical cord.  Extraction of the cord blood is done after 2 minutes and within 10 minutes of delivery. The umbilical cord and placenta contains stem cells that are useful in treating more than 80 diseases. The cord blood, blood from placenta, and the umbilical cord tissue can all be stored in a cord blood bank.

Umbilical cord blood banking is very important but getting the right volume of blood could sometimes pose a slight challenge. This has led to Doctors clamping almost immediately to get enough volume of umbilical cord; a move that may be very risky. The result is the danger of anaemia within the first months of the child’s life. Newborn babies need enough blood from the umbilical cord to survive in the outside of the mother for the first few months.

Umbilical cord blood is very useful to the newborn and so is the prospect of banking it. To avoid an after side effect, cord blood is allowed to flow to the baby and then the remainder volume of blood is what medical practice encourage that we store for future use. If an umbilical cord does not have enough blood, then cord blood from the placenta is used. There are about ten times more stems in the placenta than the umbilical cord.

In order to make cord blood banking safe, countries have regulatory bodies that keep an eye on cord blood banks. The Food and Drug Administration regulates the activities of the umbilical cord blood banks in the United States. In the United Kingdom the NHS  runs an umbilical cord blood  bank which was established in 1996 with the duty of collecting , processing, storing , and making available of samples to those in need.