Young South Asians came to Sydney’s Toongabbie Community Centre on Saturday to take swabs and join the stem cell registry in an effort to help find a cure for Vinod. The 46-year-old Sydney sider, devoted husband and father, of South Indian background, is facing a battle with an aggressive blood cancer.
The Cure for Vinod drive event was organised by family and community friends of Vinod with Stem Cell Donors Australia, Pink Sari Inc, and the Women in Health Network.
Stem cells and the donation process
According to Stem Cell Donors Australia, stem cells have the unique ability to develop into different types of blood cells, making them crucial for the body’s healing processes in fighting blood disorders such as leukaemia and thalassemia. Malfunctioning stem cells are replaced by healthy ones from a donor. Cure for Vinod
While stem cells are found in bone marrow, 90% of stem cell donations take place through peripheral blood stem cell collection which is similar to donating plasma. The remaining 10% take place by bone marrow donation under general anaesthetic. Data shows that these processes are safe and most donors return to their regular routines very quickly. Once registered, donors are only contacted when there is a match, which can be a unique, life-changing moment. This illuminating video below, posted by a donor, follows their journey on the whole donation process and is well worth seeing to get an idea of what’s involved.
“Stick it” to blood cancer
The age of stem cell donors is crucial to successful outcomes, with 18-35 being the eligible age for registrants in Australia. While young men are generally preferred, young, healthy people of all genders are excellent candidates for donation and encouraged to register.
Devavrath, a 24-year-old Sydney-based Carnatic singer and law student who registered on Saturday, shared how this was a simple act which could potentially go a long way towards helping find a cure for Vinod or someone else who needs it. Cure for Vinod
“It’s in our blood”
As ethnicity is an important factor in contributing to finding a matching donor some of us pondered on that fact that so few South Asians are represented in the global stem cell registry. “In our culture we love to give so I was actually quite surprised with this,” said Devavrath, who hopes that drives like Cure for Vinod can help to address this shortage.
As a case in point, while there are almost 1 million registered donors in India, this is only 0.06% of the Indian population and 2.12% of donors worldwide. This makes it difficult to find matching donors. According to this May 2025 article in The Week magazine, around 1 in every 10 Indian patients requiring a stem cell donation is able to find a match (compared with around 7 in 10 Caucasians in the US). This is an even harder proposition in Indian and South Asians in the diaspora, where the likelihood of finding a match in their local country is even smaller, such as in Canada or here down under.
Australia currently has just over 185,000 registered donors, or less than 0.7% of the national population (or 1.16% of the eligible 18–35-year-old population). In fact, the vast majority (80%) of stem cell donations received by Australian patients comes from overseas, with particularly low numbers of matches for our First Nations, Asian, Middle Eastern, and African communities. For First Nations communities, this is further compounded since the Australian registry is the only likely source of matches.
A simple invitation
All of these numbers and details can seem confusing. But at the heart of these statistics are real individual stories which can become much more real when they link to us personally through community or extended family connections, as I happen to have with Vinod.
For some, the Cure for Vinod drive was close to home in other ways, as it was for Anubha Varma, breast cancer survivor and ambassador for Pink Sari Inc. For Anubha, low numbers of South Asians in the stem cell registry were “driven by lack of awareness, not biology”. Recalling her own experience of overcoming the cultural stigma of a cancer diagnosis to being a leading advocate for early screening, Anubha encouraged people in our community to become more open-minded and pragmatic in our approach to health issues whether it’s breast cancer screening or stem cell donation.
Such stories and the kindness of Saturday’s 24 new registrants echo a simple message – more donor registrations equals more of a chance of helping people like Vinod. And if you’re eligible, able and willing, could you be the one to give this special gift of life?
Click here to join the Stem Cell donor registry and click here for details about giving blood (especially O type) for the victims of the Bondi attacks, another urgent drive.
Special thanks to Vinod’s family, the donors featured and to Kate Levy and Valentina Thiering from Stem Cell Donors Australia.
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