Monique has rallied her family and community to help find a bone marrow match for her adopted daughter, who has been diagnosed with Aplastic Anemia.
Fourways, South Africa (12 September 2022) – Happy and healthy Noshile was living life as usual when her health turned; she was later diagnosed with Aplastic Anemia. Her family have rallied to find her a donor match and have created a social media campaign to make that happen!
Mom Monique is now hoping that they can find her match by raising awareness. Monique has managed to get in touch with DKMS Africa to create a campaign to get donors signed up. Nosh, as she is affectionately known, is adopted, which means Monique does not know her family history nor access to potential donor matches. This has made the search through DKMS much-more essential.
“Completely out of nowhere, our beautiful, full of life, sporty and happy daughter Noshile was diagnosed with a serious blood disease called Aplastic Anemia.
Severe Aplastic Anemia (AA), in simple terms is bone marrow failure. Her own immune system is attacking her healthy cells. The cause is very often unknown, as with Noshile.”
A bone marrow donation, also called a stem cell transplant, requires the donor to be from a similar DNA group to the recipient. For Nosh, this means her donor needs to come from an ethnic background. DKMS Africa has been working tirelessly to raise awareness for more donors from ethnic groups in South Africa.
Registering to become a donor takes 5 minutes on the DKMS website. It’s free, requires no surgery, and does not depend on blood type.
Once registered, a swab kit will be sent to you and then collected so your swabs can be sent to the lab for typing before you are added to the global registry. If you are a match for someone, DKMS will contact you directly.
“The chances of being a match for someone are currently 1 in 100 000 and a South African is diagnosed with a blood cancer or blood disorder every 72 minutes.
Black, Coloured, Indian, and Asian patients have a 19% chance of finding a match and a second chance at life.
Matches are based on tissue type and a patient is most likely to match with someone of the same ethnic group which is why having a diverse donor registry improves the chances of these patients finding a match. You will only be required to donate your stem cells if you are found to be a match for someone.” – DKMS Africa
Monique hopes that by spreading awareness about Nosh’s story, they can find her a life-changing match!
“The search for a donor is a world wide one but no match has yet been found. Our best chances for finding a match, will be in Africa. There is a misunderstanding as to how easy a test is and how, with minor discomfort, one could save a life.
Our hope is, with increasing awareness, many people will come forward to be tested and therefore increase Noshile’s chance, and numerous others suffering from a blood disease, in finding a match and saving her life.”
DKMS has registered over 10.5 million donors globally and facilitated more than 91 000 transplants; this means 91 000 second chances of life for patients suffering from a life-threatening blood disorder.
Having more donors improves the chances that a patient will be able to find their match. Getting more people to register means correcting longstanding misconceptions about what it means to be a bone marrow donor. Being a donor is not as painful, invasive or permanent as many people believe. If you are curious about what it is like being a donor, 21-year-old Luke recently got to donate after waiting for 3-years to be someone’s match. He shared his experience here.
If you are between the ages of 18 – 55 and in general good health, request a swab kit at dkms-africa.org. It starts with a swab, and it ends with saving a life!
There are other ways to support blood cancer and blood disorder patients if you are not eligible to donate blood stem cells. You can help DKMS Africa spread awareness, host donor drives, contribute financially and order and distribute swab kits to your network. You can find out more here.
You can follow Nosh’s journey via Instagram here.
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