Help Save the Lives of Two young Israeli children dying from Leukaemia.

Bone Marrow Donor Drive

Two Israeli children, 6 year old Amit Kadesh and 3 year old Dan-Dan Nevo 's little bodies are being ravished by an aggressive form Leukaemia and as they lay in The Schnieder Children's Hospital almost dying, their distraught and courageous parents appealed to Gift of Life Australia to help search for an unrelated donor whose tissue type would match their children so that their leukaemia would be cured with an urgent stem cell transplant.

Today the life threatening disease Leukaemia, cancer of the white blood cells, can be cured with a stem cell [ blood ] or bone marrow transplant. Only 1 in 3 patients find a match within their immediate family, 68% need to look for unrelated donors. As tissue type is ethnically related, their only chance of finding a match is within their own community. In this case, the world wide Jewish community. Even then this probability is only 1 in 50,000. Tragically neither Omer,Amit's older brother nor anyone from Dan-Dan's family was found to be compatible.

Potential donors must be between 18-45 years of age, in good health and need to complete a routine Red Cross medical questionnaire and have a simple blood test (2 spoonfuls). Over 1 million transplants have been performed worldwide with no long term adverse side effects to the donors ever reported.

In the last 15 years Shula Endrey-Walder, founder of Gift of Life Australia has tested over 6000 potential donors onto the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry and hopes that many of the approximately 35,000 potential donors in Australia, still available to be tested ,will come forward to be registered in order to save the lives of Amit and Dan-Dan and several other patients . As she quotes " becoming a potential donor is a real simple mitzvah and "one who saves a life ....it is as if he has saved an entire world !" "

Registration and testing takes place every Sunday morning at Wolper Jewish Hospital by appointment. For further information and/or to make an appointment please contact info@giftoflifeaustralia.org.au or Shula 0414 780 444