Help Cancer Patients Find Bone Marrow Donors!

As we are adjusting to life during pandemic, many patients are beginning to regain access to postponed procedures, therapies and treatments.  Since July, bone marrow donor searches resumed in foreign donor registries and we are now able to procure matching donor cells and bring them across the borders. 

Most recently, we transferred 15,000 euros to a German donor registry to help three young cancer patients with their registry bills.  All of these patients have been fighting cancer for many years, and one has been stricken with two cancers in eight years. 

In 2012 Evgenia, a young accountant and a single mom, began having fevers and nightly sweats.  After months of treatment with antibiotics, she had a proper evaluation and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.  Evgenia was successfully treated and remained in remission until April 2020.  Suddenly she started feeling unwell, and her blood tests came back abnormal.  Evgenia was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and urgently hospitalized.  This type of blood cancer needs to be treated with a bone marrow transplant from a donor, but Evgenia's parents have passed away and she has no siblings.  No matches turned up in the Russian donor registry, but the registries abroad have potential donors. 

For patients like Evgenia your support is vital, as Russian government does not pay for donor searches abroad.  Thank you so much for offering Evgenia and patients like her a lifeline of support!   This week (until Friday, September 18th), you will be able to multiply the impact of your donation by participating in Little by Little campaign. Every donation of up to $50 will get a 50% match from GlobalGiving, and new monthly donations will get an additional 100% match!  Please consider joining this generous campaign and helping patients get through this difficult year. 

Thanks again for your care and support!  Stay safe! 

As global coronavirus pandemic swept across the globe, it impacted all of us in a variety of ways and continues to change the way we live.  Cancer care too has been severely disrupted: closed borders made travel challenging, research has been interrupted, and patients' treatment has been postponed in many cases. 

Patients awaiting results of bone marrow donor search in foreign registries had to adjust to a new reality as registries stopped shipping donors' cells abroad.  This meant patients had to either risk postponing bone marrow transplants, or agree to riskier transplants from half-matched relatives.   For a minority of patients, a small patchwork of domestic registries may turn up a good match. 

For now, uncertainty around pandemic and closed borders led to a freeze in foreign registry searches.  We don't know how long it is going to last, but we expect that demand for foreign donors will resume once international travel becomes safe. We will keep you updated on any changes impacting our project and the patients we support during these unprecedented times.  For now, please stay safe and take good care of yourselves. Thank you for staying with us!