VijayMehta.com

On October 19, 1999, we started a grass root movement to inspire our community to register for National Marrow Donor Program, and educate them about the simplicity of the actual donation procedure. A small sacrifice on our part can make a big difference in someone else’s life!

My efforts over the past few years have been very productive, as I have visited Los Angeles to New Jersey and Texas to Chicago to spread the message. The result has been heartwarming. I have personally registered more than 11,795 people and nationwide the number of Indians on the registry has gone from 5,000 (from previous 11 years) to more than 60,000! The awareness of this issue in our community has increased tremendously.

Our community is slowly but surely warming up to this cause. During one month in February of 2001, at least three Indian youths were recipients of a life saving matching bone marrow. Which is quite a progress from one person getting marrow every five years or so.

Twenty three year old Alisha from Freemont California needed matching bone marrow and California added 1,400 and Texas added 1,850 people in one month. Unfortunately, Alisha passed away on April 29th, 2001 before all these samples could be properly processed. One week after her death we were told that they had found several perfect matches for her.

The lesson was clear. If we wait to register our bone marrow until someone we know needs help, it might be too late. It takes about 3-6 months to process the sample, find the match and help the patient. So the best time to register is now!

Four year old Alisha Choksi from Jupiter FL is not able to produce normal red blood cells. She can be helped by finding a matching bone marrow. I am sure there are several Asian Americans in this country with a matching and life saving bone marrow for Alisha. The question is, shall we find this person in time?

We need to continue this mission and keep increasing the awareness among our community. It is very disheartening that we do not use the national conventions and other gatherings to educate and inspire our community. We appeal to all the Asian media and leadership to address this issue and find five minutes of time or few pages to spread the message.

While it is good that people register to help particular someone. But we should be joining the data bank to help anyone who might need the bone marrow.

Give the Gift of Life
How difficult it is to give a sample of our blood once in a life time? And that gives hope to any one in the whole world (this data bank is available to anyone in the world) who needs matching bone marrow until you are 60 years old. Or give less than five percent of you bone marrow that can be taken by a small procedure to give someone a new chance to life.

Our community has become the most educated ethnic minority on the bone marrow registry in less than five years! At SASA 2004 in Houston we have moved on to the phase II of this movement. This year we are asking at least fifty university organizations or community organizations to organize a bone marrow drive.