He may be from Ontario, but Noor Deol’s family is hoping that British Columbia could hold the key to his recovery.
“We want to reach 120 people, but mainly our goal is to get the awareness out there. We want a lot of males, because they’re not as much as part of the registry as females are. And we want South Asians,” says his sister Simrat.
She organized an event at Gurdwara Khalsa Diwan in Vancouver, hoping to find a match for her 18-year-old brother.
Noor was first diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 2010. It went into remission in 2012 but relapsed last December.
Nobody from his family was a match for a transplant, prompting a desperate search across the country.
Simrat has been putting up signs, creating campaigns online, and organizing teams of volunteers to hold bone marrow donor registration drives, all in the hopes of getting young, South Asian men to register with OneMatch. While there are 350,000 registered bone marrow donors in Canada, 71 per cent are Caucasian.
“The swab that someone gives here today could help a family member in India or Pakistan,” says David Patterson, Director of Donor Relations for Canadian Blood Services.
Another event will be held on July 12 in Abbotsford, at the Kaldighar Darbar Temple from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Simrat is hopeful that through this process, a match will be found.
“If he gets a match, it will be amazing.”
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