A team of medical specialists from Bradford Royal Infirmary will be flying to Pune at the end of the month to help cash-starved haemophilia centres in India.

Four experts from the Bradford Haemophilia Centre, twinned with its counterpart in Pune, will be making the trip on January 30 laden with medication and spare equipment. And with them will go nearly £2,500 raised by Bradford's Asian community to help build a new clinic.

Haemophilia is an inherited disorder caused by the absence of factor VIII or factor IX which makes the blood clot. On average, it costs the equivalent of US$100,000 to $200,000 a year to treat a haemophiliac in the UK, where a sufferer is given factor VIII concentrates derived from normal human blood or a synthetic substitute.

But in India, where the average annual income is less than US$100, health spending amounts to just $2 to $6 per head. And if left untreated, internal bleeding in haemophiliacs can cause swelling in joints, leading to pain, deformity or death.

One of the medical team, specialist nurse Alex Whittle, said the situation in India was compounded by viral infections such as HIV and AIDS.

"The problems with HIV occurred because, when blood is donated, it's done in large batches of up to 20,000 donors. Synthetic blood stops that but it's an expensive process and it precludes third world countries. Much of the burden falls on Western countries to help."

Links between Bradford and the Haematology Society of Maharashta, in Pune, were first established at a meeting of the World Federation of Haemophilia.

But consultant haematologist Liakat Parapia, who visited the Indian centre in 1997, said the relationship was a two-way process.

He said: "We realised instantly that there were a lot of connections between Bradford and Pune. Both areas have a large Asian community and a communality in language. There was an immediate empathy.

"The whole point is that we try to help Pune develop into the equivalent of what we have here but we learn from them as well. It's amazing what they can do with limited resources."

The team has collected spare equipment such as drugs, syringes, bandages and medical books, and will be holding workshops and clinics over their one-week stay. And BRI liaison officer Lakhbir Kaur will be taking cash raised as part of her £20,000 target to build a new clinic.

She said: "People are not aware of this problem nowadays and it's such a painful disease. We can't solve all the problems in the world but we can get a few more people to think and do our best."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.