AN APPEAL!

Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) ceased to be a rare disease for us after I received a phone call from my close friend, whose family I have known since kindergarten (25 years). His brother-in-law Vinay was diagnosed with the disease and had early recurrence after 3 rounds of chemotherapy.  He is now in need of a bone marrow transplant. Unfortunately, he did not match his siblings or to the donors on the marrow donor registry.

If you are of Indian descent (or from the Indian sub-continent) visiting this page:

please, please register on the donor database. We form one of the largest ethnic subgroups in the world, yet the number of donors of Indian ethnicity on both the US and the Indian marrow registry number less than 75,000 combined. Registration is easy, it requires nothing more than a simple buccal swab. Since we are a minority on the database, the testing fee of $52 is waived. The NMDP center covering Utah is in Kansas. All you have to do is to call this number - 1 800 3666710 , state that you wish to register on the donor registry and state that you are of Indian descent. They will mail you the complete packet and it is all free of charge. It takes a couple of minutes to complete the call. For further information, please visit: http://www.marrow.org/index.html If you wish to register, please do so by phone. Apparently there is no way for them to waive the $52 fee for minority groups if you register online. It took me less than a couple of minutes to place the call and to give them my mailing address. Once again, please do consider being a marrow donor, if not for Vinay, for a potential recipient.
Alternately, you could also register for a home-testing kit online here: http://www.aadp.org/pages/register.php


For everyone else:

There is only a 30% chance for a  person requiring a marrow transplant to match their sibling. Recipients do not always find a matching donor. Please do consider registering yourself on the donor database. The marrow transplant procedure takes a few hours for the donor but for the recipient it means a few more years instead of weeks to live. Please do consider registering as a marrow donor.

Links:

http://www.helpvinay.org/dp/
http://www.marrow.org/index.html


back to my webpage