Ranchi, Feb. 22: Kriti, a 22-year-old ambitious girl from Hazaribagh, Jharkhand is urgently seeking her lifesaver to help beat blood cancer, and give her a second chance at life. Kriti has been diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia, a fatal blood cancer. She is being treated in Delhi where doctors have recommended a blood stem cell transplant as the only option of treatment.
To spread the word and reach out to more and more people, DKMS BMST Foundation India, a non-profit organization dedicated to the fight against blood cancer and related disorders has launched a virtual drive for Kriti where one can register online to be a potential blood stem cell donor and save patients like Kriti. People who are interested and fit the eligibility criteria can register at: www.dkms-bmst.org/kriti
Kriti was diagnosed with blood cancer when she was 12-year-old and is on medication for the last 10 years. After struggling to live a normal life with medications, she is now in a critical stage where a stem cell transplant is her only chance at survival. Her stem cell transplant will only be possible if she finds a matching blood stem cell donor.
As per Dr. Dinesh Bhurani, Director, Department of Haemato-oncology & Bone Marrow Transplantation, Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Center, New Delhi, “In India, every 5 minutes someone is diagnosed with a form of blood cancer or other blood disorder. Many patients cannot survive without a life-saving stem cell donation and the search for a donor is the start of a race against time. The faster a suitable donor is found, the better the chances of survival for patients, like in the case of Kriti. Patients and donors of Indian origin have unique HLA (Human Leukocyte Antigen) characteristics which makes the probability of finding a suitable donor even more difficult as Indians are severely under-represented in the in the global database. This increases the need for more people of Indian ethnicity to register themselves as a potential stem cell donor and help save a life.”