People
Sikh-Canadian Teen Urgently Seeks Matching Bone Marrow Donor
RHIANNA SCHMUNK
An Ontario (Canada) teen battling leukemia has come to British Columbia hoping to find a matching bone marrow donor who could save his life.
Jasnoor (“Noor”) Singh Deol, 18, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia five years ago. He went into remission in 2013, but relapsed in December.
Because his cancer is so aggressive, chemotherapy is not an effective treatment. Noor, who is a Sikh-Canadian of Punjabi descent, needs a bone marrow transplant.
However, he doesn't have any matching family members, so he's appealing to the public for help.
The problem is, the vast majority of Canada's 330,000 registered stem cell donors are Caucasian. Noor's best chance of finding a match is among people with the same ancestry as him -- which means, someone of descent from the South Asian subcontinent -- because genetic markers are different between ethnic populations.
Statistics from one doctor show that just 4.8 per cent of those donors are South Asian. The odds are even lower if a patient is of mixed race.
Canada's OneMatch program is working to raise the number of ethnically diverse male donors in Noor's age bracket. Signing up requires a simple and painless cheek swab.
Noor and his family travelled from Ontario to the Vancouver area this month to engage the Sikh-Canadian community in that region.
They organized events to raise awareness at Gurdwara Khalsa Diwan in Vancouver and another at the Kalgidhar Darbar Gurdwara in Abbotsford last week.
They've also started a YouTube channel, trying to get the word out.
The teen's family is keeping in touch with the bone marrow registry in India, where Noor has the best odds of finding a donor. They discovered that many people were unwilling or unable to sign up, because they have to pay C$89 (US$70) to cover the cost of the cheek swab.
So the family decided to pay for the cost of the swabs, resulting in more than 1,000 candidates in India coming forward. They launched a GoFundMe page to cover expenses.
"We didn't want money to be the reason that Noor couldn't find a match. However, it's getting really expensive for us to be able to afford all of this," wrote Noor's sister, Simrat Kaur.
"These people who are registering are not just doing it for Noor, they are doing it for anyone who needs a stem cell/bone marrow transplant."
CLICK here to find out how to register as a bone marrow donor in Canada.
For more info, please CLICK here.
[Courtesy: The Huffington Post]
July 15, 2015
Conversation about this article
1: Sunny Grewal (Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada), July 15, 2015, 11:24 AM.
Should we register with the bone marrow database or is there a way to first have our donation checked with this young man first?
2: Ajit Singh Batra (Pennsville, New Jersey, USA), July 15, 2015, 3:49 PM.
I would like to donate my little bit for the treatment of Noor Singh Deol. Please advise his address.
3: Editor, sikhchic.com (Mount Forest, Ontario, Canada), July 15, 2015, 4:54 PM.
The following is the Facebook address which should be able to guide potential donors: https://www.facebook.com/MatchforNoor
4: Sachins Sharma (Amritsar, Punjab), July 16, 2015, 4:25 AM.
I would like to donate, if I can, to save his life.
5: Marty (England), July 25, 2015, 11:05 PM.
What would the procedure be for people abroad in the UK? I'd like to attempt to help this lad.