TRENTON, N.J. – A 29-year-old New Jersey woman whose desperate search for a bone-marrow transplant launched a nationwide campaign to recruit more donors of South Asian descent has found a perfect match.
Pia Awal of Lincoln Park, N.J., who has been battling acute myelogenous leukemia, initially was told that the odds for a lifesaving transplant were slim. Her best chance was from another person of South Asian descent, among the most underrepresented groups in the nation’s bone marrow registry.
Family members and other loved ones built a Web site and helped get 12,442 more people tested in just 14 weeks. Now a stem cell – or bone marrow – donor in the United Kingdom has been identified, and blood tests confirm the donor is an identical match for Awal.
“We were very happy obviously because our prayers were answered,” said Tim Dutta, Awal’s fiance, who has helped lead the effort to find a compatible donor.
Awal is expected to undergo the transplant later this month. She and her fiance, along with their cat, have packed up their belongings and headed to Seattle, where she plans to undergo the procedure at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
“I’m very excited, but at the same time I’m also scared and nervous and kind of feeling like I don’t know what to expect,” Awal said from Seattle.
The last few months included a steady wave of grass-roots efforts, including 188 donor drives organized in 83 cities around the country. It was not immediately known when the British donor joined the registry and whether it was in response to the couple’s efforts, Dutta said.
Still, Awal appears to have beaten some steep odds. An estimated 70 percent of people in the National Marrow Donor Program are Caucasian, meaning there is a critical need for minority donors, according to Moazzam Khan with the South Asian Marrow Association of Recruiters.
At the time MatchPia.org was launched, only 60,000 to 65,000 South Asians were listed as possible donors.
The relatively small population of Americans of South Asian descent is one reason why it was difficult to find a match. There are only about 2.5 million people with South Asian ancestry in the United States, Khan said.
With an identical match, Awal and Dutta have jumped the first, most critical hurdle in her recovery, but they acknowledged a difficult road lies ahead. The initial days after a transplant will be key, and Awal will receive drugs to help prevent her body from rejecting the donor’s stem cells.
“The journey is a little bit longer than anyone knows, and we don’t know what the journey is going to entail, but we know that with our beliefs and with the support we’ve been getting, we know we can fight it,” Dutta said.
Awal credited her supporters with helping her endure the wait.
“Not only has their support led to our success with the drive, it’s really led to my success emotionally, the way we continue to get so many e-mails,” she said. “That really brings such a smile to my face because clearly I see how loved I am. That just encourages me to want to continue to fight. It’s a very special feeling.”
The couple, whose families both immigrated from India, know of at least 35 other South Asian patients currently waiting for matches.
They hope their efforts will create a lasting legacy for others who will need transplants. They recently started the South Asian Marrow Foundation to help patients pay for the expenses related to finding a match and to help recruit future donors.
“Even though we have found a match, our efforts are totally not over,” Awal said. “This is definitely a mission. By no means are we done yet.”
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