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For immediate
release: May 15,2003 (407) 894-2888 NO CHILD SHOULD DIE NEEDLESSLY Kids Beating Cancer Needs You To Continue It’s Lifesaving Mission And Help A Local Boy Receive A Life-Saving Marrow Transplant. Kids Beating Cancer, (KBC), the contracted Marrow Donor Recruitment Group for the National Marrow Donor Program, desperately needs to raise $26,000 to test 400 new potential marrow stem cell donors in hopes of identifying a donor for a local teenage boy in need of a marrow or blood stem cell transplant to survive his deadly leukemia. The sophisticated and expensive DNA lab testing necessary to identify a potential marrow or blood stem cell donor is never covered by insurance. Kids Beating Cancer must raise the funds for the donor search process for children and adults whose survival depends on identifying an exact DNA match. Without community support, Kids Beating Cancer cannot offer the testing for free and must charge $65 to each willing Central Florida volunteer. Most people cannot afford to pay for the lab test, but are willing to be a donor if ever matched with a patient in need. “If we have to charge volunteers the cost of the lab test, the majority of those willing to donate would not be able to join the National Registry and hundreds of patients every month would not be able to receive a life-saving transplant,” said Margaret Voight Guedes, CEO and Founder of Kids Beating Cancer. “Just a few months ago we lost a beautiful 14 year old girl, Kyera, because she couldn’t find a donor in time to offer her the hope of a cure.” “Kyera was of mixed heritage and her donor more than likely would have been of similar heritage.” “The problem is there just aren’t enough minorities registered with the National Registry, willing to donate a small amount of stem cells, that the body replaces, if ever matched with a patient in need.” Mrs. Guedes formed Kids Beating Cancer after she lost her son, at the age of nine, to leukemia after receiving two transplants in 1992. Life is already too short… and for thousands of children and adults, their lives are cut even shorter. Every year thousands of Americans die from cancer, leukemia, or one of 72 other life-threatening related diseases. These deaths could have been prevented and the patients cured through a marrow or blood stem cell transplant. However, only 25% of the time is a match found in the immediate family. Health insurance and Medicaid never fund the cost to DNA type volunteer potential donors. Medicaid does not even cover the cost to DNA type family members of a child in need of a transplant in hopes of identifying a sibling match. Kids Beating Cancer’s mission is to fund that cost for the families, so they can concentrate on their child and not raising the money to do community donor recruitment to test volunteers in search of an unrelated donor match. Andrew, the son of two Orange County Correction's officers, needs
a donor to have a fighting chance of beating his Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. Without the funds to identify potential donors, Kids
Beating Cancer may have to turn away the volunteer who may be KBC is faced daily with people whose lives are measured in months without a transplant. In order to match donors to patients of all races, KBC focuses on the critically underserved Minority communities to add new DNA typings not presently on the National Registry. Marrow is genetically inherited the same way our eye and skin color is, therefore, the best match for a patient searching for a marrow or blood stem cell donor will most likely come from someone of the same racial or ethnic background. Raising funds for the donor DNA typing can be the greatest barrier for a successful transplant. Community support allows the donor typing necessary to identify life-saving matches and will give a child the hope of a cure from their fatal disease. Everyday, healthy, strong children have their lives put on hold by the devastation of being diagnosed with life-threatening diseases whose only cure is often times a marrow or blood stem cell transplant. From the moment the diagnosis is made, their lives are on a clock, ticking inexorably toward death, unless a miracle happens. That miracle is very complicated. The family has to quickly make decisions about treatment choices, physicians, hospitals, and insurance issues, sometimes even having to travel out of town for treatment. When a marrow or blood stem cell transplant is the treatment of choice, the miracle is finding a donor in time. A donor must be found of the same race, as healthy and young as possible. Out of millions of possible genetic combinations, that donor must match the dying victim. The donor must be recruited, educated and become committed to undergo testing that is sophisticated and expensive. Finally, they must be willing to undergo a medical process, having some of their marrow or blood stem cells removed, so that a perfect stranger can have a second chance at life. Getting all that to happen is what Kids Beating Cancer is all about. For more information call Kids Beating Cancer @ (407) 894-2888 ### |
