In need of stem cell transplant

With barely any stem cell donors from ethnic minorities in Australia or worldwide, a young man battling leukaemia is in grave danger

Shehan Fernando, a 33 year old man diagnosed with leukaemia – a condition that hinders the body’s production of blood cells – is in urgent need of a stem cell transplant, and his family and friends are leaving no stone unturned to find him a suitable stem cell donor.

The best matches are generally the immediate family members of the patient, as they are most likely to have genetically matching tissue type. In Shehan’s case, however, none of his family members turned out to be a suitable match, necessitating the need to find an outside donor, who is most likely to be a South Asian as Shehan’s of Sri Lankan ethnicity.

The family’s search for this donor was met with disappointment as they soon realised that South Asians were acutely under-represented on donor registries of the world: only 2% of registered stem cell donors in the world are people of South Asian origin, an alarming figure considering the chances of finding a match are just 1 in 20,000.

This remarkable social deficit is accentuated by the fact that the region is home to almost a quarter of the world population. At the moment there are just 5-6 thousand South Asian bone marrow donors registered in Australia. India on the other hand has a mere 15,000 stem cell donors registered – an abysmally low number for a country with more that 1 billion people.

Shehan’s family has since focussed its attention on educating people on the need to become stem cell donors during various campaigns across the country. To date, they have managed to add about 600 new potential donors of South Asian background to the registry in Australia. Such drives will not only help Shehan but also the wider community.

“When Shehan’s condition was first discovered 3 months ago after the birth of his child, we realised that there was no stem cell donor registry in Sri Lanka,” says Shehan’s father Sherwell Fernando who was at one such drive at Paramatta, Sydney recently.

“His has an unusual tissue type, which makes finding a perfect match even more difficult,” says Joan Harrington from Blood Service, Bone Marrow Donor Centre, NSW and ACT.

“The stem cell transplant procedure is not very different from the normal blood donation, requiring a few injections over a few days before the drawing out the blood producing stem cells from the bloodstream,” Joan adds.

“It’s very important to educate the people on this issue. We’ve been extremely lucky and fortunate to have had such great support from this family. In the last few months we have realised that people are willing to come forward and help if they are educated about it.”

These days in 9 out of 10 cases, stem cell transplantation has replaced bone marrow transplantation and the cells are removed from the circulating blood instead of the bone. This procedure is not only simpler, it considerably less inconvenient for the donor.

Be a match, save a life

The next stem cell donor recruitment drive will be held at Parish Hall, Our Lady of Holy Rosary Church, 8 Diana Avenue, Kellyville, NSW from 1 p.m to 5 p.m  on Sunday, 10 July.

Registering oneself as a potential donor is simple. Donors are asked to give 3-5 ml of blood and they are added to the Australian donor registry after their non-identifying information is processed by the Red Cross. In this case, if a donor turns out to be a match for Shehan, he/she will be contacted by the Red Cross at a later date.

All costs are covered by the Australian Health System.

For details contact 0434 003 962/ 0401 996 517 or log on to www.abmdr.org.au