An appeal received from a retired PSU officer who was a very active
office bearer of NCOA for her daughter!
Sir,
As discussed , please find below the details of my daughter who is suffering from a disorder of
the bone marrow called MDS.
It would be great if you could help us by organizing Stem Cell Donor registration drives with
DATRI in your office & other corporates. As time is precious for her, we shall need your most
urgent support to hopefully find a match for her.
My daughter, who is aged 35 years and a mother of 2 has been diagnosed with a disorder of the
bone marrow called MDS, as a result of which her blood counts are low. The doctors who are
treating her have specified the following line of treatment for her.

A monthly cycle of intravenous medication as first line treatment for a few months to put
this disease into remission.
 A Peripheral Blood Stem Cell transplant to cure her.
For a Stem Cell transplant, there is a need for a donor who's tissue type (HLA type) is a very
good match for her. As of today, after the searches with the India Stem Cell Donor Registry
hosted by DATRI, NMDP of USA and DKMS of Germany, we DO NOT have a good match for
her anywhere in the world.
We seek your help to organize Stem Cell Donor Registration Drives with DATRI within your
organization to add more committed donors to the registry and hence increase the potential of
finding a match for my daughter.
There are 2 options how you could support us both at a corporate level and an individual level.
Considering the benefits, I would strongly urge you to spread the news and support to promote as Stem
Cell Donor Drives at Corporates (Option 1) as possible.
Option 1 - Conduct Drives in Corporate Offices
If you want to conduct drives at corporate offices, then DATRI will help with the necessary material to
build up awareness and will also conduct drives at your offices. During the drives & awareness sessions,
they shall be there to manage the whole thing. You may have to support with some volunteers from your
end to help them a bit.
I would strongly suggest you to conduct awareness sessions and roadshows (with the help of DATRI) in
addition to the mailers before you actually run the drives.
The contact person in DATRI is its CEO Raghu Rajagopal whose mobile number &
emailid are as follows
Mobile -
+919840218667
Emailid- raghu@datriworld.org
Please feel free to clarify all your doubts with Raghu, get all the necessary material for
spreading awareness and proceed accordingly to plan the donor registration drives with
DATRI at your organization.
Option 2 - Individual Donors who could register outside of the Donor Drives in Corporate Offices
If an individual person wants to register as a donor, then he could use the following steps.



The person could order for a kit from the following
link http://register.datriworld.org/Aspx1/NewDonorKit.aspx
Do not forget to mark the patient's name..................."
There will be a confirmation call from DATRI. Make sure that confirm your committment to the
larger cause of being a stem cell donor. Also communicate that you are doing so for the sake
of the patient ............... sending back the kits, also mark sure that the patient's name is
marked as well on the envelope along with donor registration form. No need to pay the Rs
2500 if the patient's name is marked as .....................
How Can a Potential Donor help
Give a Buccal Swab Sample
• A quick and simple process, where a cotton swab is rubbed inside your cheek. It is later
processed to determine your genetic typing, which shall be stored and hosted by DATRI in the
Stem Cell Donor Registry.
What happens if you are THE one
• Well then, your cells will help someone live - perhaps the best gift you can give
ANYONE. In case of a successful genetic match, stem cells are obtained from your peripheral
blood (donor) through a process very similar to a blood donation exercise (as an Outpatient
procedure) and injected into the patient’s blood stream.
We invite all of you to come and join the India Stem Cell donor registry and help SAVE A
LIFE!!
Also please see the link below of an article that demonstrates how such efforts can help SAVE A
LIFE!!
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/a-few-seconds-from-you-could-help-save-amit-gupta-s-life144489
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/indian-american-entrepreneur-amit-gupta-finally-gets-bonemarrow-donor-169171?h_related_also_see
A few seconds from you could help SAVE A LIFE and potentially my daughhter as well!
Please feel free to clarify all your doubts with Raghu, get all the necessary material for spreading
awareness and proceed accordingly to plan the donor registration drives with DATRI at your
organization.
Please remember that you need to build a good amount of awareness on this topic (with
roadshows and other mechanisms) before you organize the drives in-order to ensure very good
participation turnouts.
A few facts to break some myths

Contrary to Popular perception, there is NO invasive procedure to collect stem cells from
the donor, as it involves only donation of Stem Cells filtered from the Peripheral Blood
from the veins.

For a perfect match, the donor's HLA type should match at the high resolution level at all
the 10 points. Unlike blood groups, there are millions of possible unique combinations
of HLA type and hence the chance to get a match is very difficult. As of today, there are
hundreds of patients all over the world ( very many of Indian Ethnic Origins), whose
life is at stake and is still awaiting for a potential matching donor.

In the registry hosted by DATRI, there are only 25000 entries at this point, whereas
countries such as the US, Germany etc have registries to the size of 10 to 6 million each.
As HLA types are based on ethnic races and origins, it is very difficult for Indians who
have haematological malignancies to find a donor in other countries, hence the need to
build our India Registry.
Please do feel free to contact me at any point in time to clarify any doubts that you may have.
Thanks & Best Regards,
Jomy Yohannan (Son in law)
Mobile- +91-9986039347