Join drive to save lives

Sunflower Fund hopes popular soccer star will boost donor list

FORMER Ajax Cape Town soccer star and actor Eric Macheru is teaming up with the Sunflower Fund in a national drive to create awareness about blood diseases and to drive interest for people to register as blood stem cell donors.

Macheru, better known as Leeto in the popular soapie Skeem Saam, has been an Ambassador of Hope for the Sunflower Fund for two years and regularly gives his time to engage young people to help grow the stem cell donor registry.

“What most people don’t understand is that there are various blood diseases that can affect you at any given point in your life.

“There is so much misinformation about blood stem cell donation and people don’t respond because of a lack of information,” Macheru said.

Common blood disorders include anaemia, bleeding disorders such as haemophilia and blood cancers such as leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma.

The only hope of a cure is a blood stem cell transplant.

Patients are essentially looking for their genetic twin. The chances of finding this match are 1:100000.

The best chance of finding a match is within your same ethnic background. There is only a 25% chance that a sibling is a match. The remaining 75% chance depends on an unrelated matching donor being found.

Black patients around the world are at a disadvantage because of the under-representation of black, coloured and Indian donors in the global donor pool.

“People don’t realise that it is painless to register as a donor, or that you only donate once in your life and that there are no major side effects of being a donor,” Macheru said.

A blood stem cell transplant is a procedure where a person’s defective cells in their bone marrow are replaced by healthy ones from their donor.

For the donor, it involves a fairly painless procedure that can take up to six hours, which is similar to donating blood platelets and with no major side effects.

“Many people say they would try their utmost to save a life if ever confronted with a situation where someone is in need of help. We want people to understand that there is a stranger out there in need of a match and you might well be that life-saver they are waiting for,” Macheru said.

“If you are willing to consider helping anyone in need of a transplant for whom you might be a match, get registered telephonically, or join us in person at one of the drives. The entire process will take less than 10 minutes of your time,” he added.

“I am proud to be associated with the Sunflower Fund and to be able to play a small part in the fight against blood diseases, and help spread awareness so we can recruit 3000 donors in March,” Macheru added.

The Sunflower Fund has called on individuals between the ages of 18 and 45, in good health and weighing more than 50kgs, with a BMI of less than 40, to register as donors.

The national drive kicks off with a public donor drive in Cape Town on March 2, from 9am to 1pm at Spine Road High in Mitchells Plain. To find out more visit www.sunflowerfund.org or call them toll-free on 0800 12 10 82.

Black patients are at a disadvantage because of the under-representation of black, coloured and Indian donors