Help Cancer Patients Find Bone Marrow Donors!

Leukemia often strikes children and young adults, and even though our project supports patients of all ages, many of them are young people under 30.  So far this year we supported six young people with the costs of searches for bone marrow donors.  In some cases, patients need to search for the donors more than once.  For example, Petr, a cello player from St. Petersburg was diagnosed with leukemia in 2011 when he was only 16.  After disease relapse, he needed bone marrow transplantation from a donor and was able to undergo it in 2015.  But afterwards the bone marrow from the donor never engrafted fully, causing two more disease recurrences.  A new drug for leukemia became available meanwhile, and it helped Petr get into remission again.  However, he needs to receive donor's stem cell infusions periodically to maintain remission.  Over the years, the original stem cell harvest was exhausted, and Petr needed additional cells to be procured.  Thanks to donations we received this year, we were able to cover the new bill from the donor registry. 

This summer GlobalGiving is trying something different to support non-profits serving young people.  Starting at 9:00am EDT on Monday, August 7th, and running until 11:59pm EDT on International Youth Day, Saturday, August 12th, GlobalGiving will apply $13,000 in matching funds at 100% on all donations up to $250. Additionally, there is a 100% match on all recurring donations started during the campaign week (up to $250). GlobalGiving will also be giving out $2,000 worth of bonus prizes to the top 3 projects with the most funds raised and top 3 projects with the most unique donors.

We hope you will join us on August 7th or later that week and help us support young patients like Petr!  Make sure to donate early to maximize your chances of getting the match!

Thank you so much for your kindness!

Our project is continuing to grow from year to year!  So far by May we raised more than in the previous years and were able to contribute almost $19,000 to the costs of bone marrow donor searches for 5 patients with blood cancers.  These five patients are all young people, majority of them are students.  Here is just one story of our most recently supported patient. 

Ilya is 35.  He is an engineer and lives in Ivanovo in central Russia. He loves rock music, nature, traveling around Russia and swimming.  Tinkering with computers and creating websites is another passion.  Until two years ago, Ilya was rarely ill.  And then a sudden pain in his spine caused him to start visiting doctors and then landed him in a hospital.   Upon examination, Ilya was diagnosed with chronic leukemia.  Although it can be treated, Ilya needed to undergo bone marrow transplant from a donor to prevent his disease from returning. 

Ilya has no siblings, and a search in the Russian donor database yielded no matches. His data was forwarded to the German registry where a matching donor was found in March 2017.  A month later, after additional chemotherapy helped Ilya achieve remission, the doctors transplanted him the donor's stem cells.  He is now recovering.  

For the last two years, Ilya was unable to work.  His savings are depleted, and his only close relative - his mom - has been retired for many years.  Without help from people like you, it would hardly be possible for Ilya to access the right treatment at the right time. Thanks you so much for your support for Ilya and patients like him!