{"id":6949,"date":"2014-10-21T12:16:06","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T12:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tat.reddaisytrading.co.uk\/index.php\/2014\/10\/21\/teenagers-bone-marrow-transplant\/"},"modified":"2016-01-07T13:58:07","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T13:58:07","slug":"teenagers-bone-marrow-transplant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2014\/10\/21\/teenagers-bone-marrow-transplant\/","title":{"rendered":"Teenager\u2019s bone marrow transplant"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Birmingham teenager speaks out over lack of transplants in ethnic minorities<\/h3>\n

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\nLike most girls her age, Aneesa Hussain was living a normal life with hopes for a bright future. But at 17 her life was turned upside down when she was diagnosed with \u2018aplastic anaemia\u2019, a rare and seriously fatal bone marrow disease.<\/p>\n


\nHussain and her family frantically began looking for a bone marrow transplant, her only hope for recovery, but after a 10 month global search no matches were found. Due to Hussain\u2019s Pakistani ethnicity the only suitable transplant could be from someone of the same background, sadly it has been revealed that very few ethnic minority transplants are available.<\/p>\n


\nNHS Blood and Transplant, the group responsible for organ and tissue donations, revealed that only 36 per cent of families from black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) backgrounds said they would donate their organs. This is compared to 63 per cent of people from white backgrounds. Of the 1,320 deceased organ donors that year, only 74 were from BAME backgrounds, and in the past three years less than 10 per cent of families of critically ill Pakistani patients agreed to donate their relative\u2019s organs.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cI feel disappointed and angry with my own community for not donating,\u201d Aneesa said, whose grandparents came to Britain from Pakistan in their youth. \u201cHelping to save someone\u2019s life should be seen as a positive thing to do, regardless of what ethnicity you are.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nTwo years before this predicament, Hussain had many goals after finishing school. After school she would take out a gap year travelling in Japan, then graduate from university and begin a career in marketing. After being diagnosed she was immediately put onto the organ donor list.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cMy doctor warned me there was a shortage of ethnic minority donors,\u201d she says. \u201cI was surprised. I naively assumed everybody who needed a donor would find one.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nMany factors come into why statistics for ethnic minorities are so low, one of them being religion, \u201cThere are certain aspects of the Islamic faith \u2013 such as the emphasis put on the respect of the dead and not defacing the body \u2013 that suggest you shouldn\u2019t donate,\u201d explains Dr Sharif. He even states that although bone marrow transplants are relatively simple procedures and don\u2019t require the death of the donor, there is still reluctance to donate. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cThere are also language barriers and cultural issues, along with an element of distrust towards the NHS. The NBTA is working hard to educate and engage with these communities at grassroot level.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nHussain was in and out of hospital for regular platelet transfusions and checkups, she recalls a white patient staying in her hospital ward who had 10 donors available, \u201cI was happy for her but it made the fact that I couldn\u2019t find one donor in the whole world even harder to accept.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nAs searches turned up no results and with time wasting, doctors were forced to use Hussains father, Manzoor, as a donor. There were risks as his bone marrow was only a 60% match to his daughter so it could possibly be rejected. Fortunately the operation was a success and after two years of fighting Hussain returned to school. Because her match wasn\u2019t ideal however, her health is still at risk.<\/p>\n


\nThe experience has spurred Aneesa to become a representative of a new Department of Health initiative designed to raise awareness of organ donation among Muslims of Pakistani origin. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cMy family aren\u2019t very religious but, in any case, surely the basis of all religions is to help others?\u201d she asks. \u201cBone marrow donation is such an easy, painless procedure and a way to give someone their life back.\u201d <\/p>\n


\nFor more information on this issue, please visit organdonation.nhs.uk or call 0300 1232323. \n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Birmingham teenager speaks out over lack of transplants in ethnic minorities Like most girls her age, Aneesa Hussain was living a normal life with hopes for a bright future. But at 17 her life was turned upside down when she was diagnosed with \u2018aplastic anaemia\u2019, a rare and seriously fatal bone marrow disease. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}