The situation is acute and growing dearer by the minute. Any chance of survival depend on receiving a matching bone marrow from a compatible donor - almost always from the ethnic/race pool, but not essential from the same family.
The issue is now in finding such a donor, although there is a national bone marrow registry. The reason for the alleged failure of the registry is the fact that very few south Asians actually register. The ratio when taken is something like this...for a Caucasian the probability of finding a match is 1:15 .....does anyone want to volunteer to take a guess at the probability for South Asians?
It's a mind boggling , mind numbing , amazing and totally pathetic ratio at 1:20,000 !!!
The US registry alone is 6.5 million strong with links to other such registries across the world. With Obama's appeal the registry saw a surge of 27,000 new registrants from the south Asian community, but the number is still very much ....very very much below the required.
What is really appalling about the number is that although the registration drives seems to be on the upswing, less than 50 percent of south Asians who have been identified as a possible match for a patient,actually come in for follow-up testing.
The situation in India is even more pathetic, we don't even have a national registry let alone a link-up with international registrars. We have already lost a young icon because of this. Sameer bhatia , the founder of Hotmail succumbed to this a few months back. I guess some of our Netas have to be diagnosed with this syndrome before something positive happens to kick starting a national register.
(i know this article is not the normal stuff that you normally get to read at my spot...but this an issue that i feel especially close to in my mind.do your bit..spread the news..get more awareness...spread the word...sorry if i bored you...many thanks to The Hindu and sorry also to them for the plagiarized bits )
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