Overseas MS treatment sought by hundreds of Australians despite risks and cost

ABC Sarah Tilbury said she had weighed up the risks and will be heading to the US to recieving the stem cell treatment.

Hundreds of Australians annually are heading overseas in search of treatments not available locally for multiple sclerosis (MS), despite knowing there are risks and high costs.

Among them is South Australian woman Sarah Tilbury, who is about to head to the United States for a treatment not easily accessible in Australia.

When she was in hospital this year after giving birth to her son Oliver, the 26-year-old woman was diagnosed.

In the months before the birth she had started having falls.

"Not just like someone who's a bit clumsy, my whole right side would get weak and I'd, you know, without warning be on the ground," she said.

Ms Tilbury said that, as an otherwise healthy young woman, she was told she was unlikely to experience a rapid onset of symptoms but she was still having problems.

"I ended up really not being able to walk without assistance. Tom [my husband] would pretty much have to hold me up and I was dragging my leg a lot of the time," she said.

Her health problems meant she could no longer manage in her two-storey house in the state's south-east, so the Tilburys started looking for other treatment options.

Ms Tilbury saw a TV show about Kristy Cruise, a woman with MS who had travelled to Russia for a treatment called an autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplant, or HSCT.

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Overseas MS treatment sought by hundreds of Australians despite risks and cost