Bristol Pakistani community swab to find donor for Elaiya

Not enough people from South Asian backgrounds are signed up to become blood or stem cell donors

The family of an 18-month-old leukaemia patient have been taking swabs from the community to try to find a suitable bone marrow donor for her.

Elaiya's grandfather said her "biggest problem" was that ethnic minorities tended not to join the donor register.

The Bristol family, who are of Pakistani heritage, have not yet identified a match for Elaiya but they did find a match for another child.

"That's more than I have ever achieved in my lifetime," said her father.

Muzahir Hameed said he was proud that his daughter had helped someone else's child at only 18 months of age.

Elaiya's grandfather Mazhar Iqbal launched an urgent appeal last month after he found out his granddaughter had acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).

The family are looking for a donor who is of the same heritage as Elaiya

The family were given three to five weeks to find a stem cell donor for Elaiya, who is being treated at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham.

The rare cancer can be cured by peripheral blood stem cell collection (PBSC), transfusion or bone marrow donation.

The Bone Marrow Registry says a match can be found in 70% of cases for white patients but for people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, this drops to as low as 20%.

"This is a matter of life and death and we are running out of time," said Mazhar Iqbal

"The biggest problem for Elaiya is purely not enough Asian, ethnic minorities or south Asian country's people being on the donor list," said Mr Iqbal.

"They just don't go on it."

According to the charity Blood Cancer, about 100 children and adults under the age of 19 are diagnosed with AML in the UK every year.

Sophia Iman Ali's father was diagnosed with kidney disease at the age of 20

One of the people who donated a swab was Sophia Iman Ali whose father was dedicated to raising awareness of organ donation after spending 23 years on dialysis.

"I've taken it upon myself to do as much as I can to improve everyone else's life," she said.

Mary Gate encourages black communities to join the donor register

Volunteer Mary Gate said her daughter Yvette died in 2010 from Aplastic Anaemia before a match could be found.

She and others had worked "really hard to try to reach out to the black community to join the bone marrow register", she added.

"Lots of people joined but sadly we couldn't find a match for Yvette but we managed to find a match to other patients, so we have saved other people's lives."

Elaiya's mother Summan said: "This is to give my daughter the best chance of surviving, the best hope.

"We need to find a donor."