Namaste,
Through some chance encounters, I was recently sensitized to the need of South Asians in North America to register for the stem cell donation.
As a brief introduction to this malady, many people develop blood disorders like leukemia. They lose the ability to produce red and white blood cells as well as the platelets. The only chance they have for survival is a stem cell transplant. In most cases a matching donor will be from the recipient's own ethnic group. So, although there are over 12 million donors signed up with the US national bone marrow donor registry, South Asians constitute less than 2% of the total. This puts South Asians with blood disorders at a great risk as their chances of finding a matching donor are limited. If you are in the age group 18 to 44, it would be nice to look for a bone marrow registration drive in your area and to go and register. For registration, one just has to fill out a form and provide cheek swabs. There isn't a blood test involved for registration. If you are fortunate and become a match for someone, now or in the future, then they look for compatibility by conducting a higher level blood test and determine if you could be a donor. What a tremendous opportunity would it be to save a life just by donating some stem cells from your blood, which regenerate in a healthy human being in a matter of few weeks.
I was given some websites for the local organizations which act on behalf of the national organization. Here are the links,
For New York/New Jersey area, http://samarinfo.org/
For Los Angeles area, http://a3mhope.org/
For San Francisco area, http://www.aadp.org/
The national Be the Match link, http://bethematch.org/
In Canada,
One Match program link, https://www.blood.ca/CentreApps/Inte...p=OMSplashJoin
The targeted age group in Canada is 17 to 35. Below is a short video to show you the registration process.
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v...type=2&theater
Feel free to ping me for additional information.
Pranam.
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