‘We will turn the world upside down for Elaiya’
GIRL’S FAMILY OFFERS £20,000 FOR SUCCESSFUL DONOR
THE family of an 18-month-old leukaemia patient are “turning the world upside down” to help her, testing people all over the country, offering £20,000 for a successful stem cell or bone marrow match.
Little Elaiya Hameed has a rare cancer which can only be cured by a donor – most likely from someone sharing her Pakistani heritage.
Elaiya has been receiving care at the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham and has just finished her first round of chemotherapy.
Her family will hold a surgery in Nottingham on Sunday in their search for a match.
In June, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia.
The rare cancer can be cured by peripheral blood stem cell collection (PBSC), transfusion or bone marrow donation.
Grandfather Mazhar Iqbal says the family are offering £20,000 to a suitable donor for Elaiya, who is “running out of time”.
“We are offering to turn the world upside down to help my granddaughter. This is a matter of life and death. We are also hoping this financial incentive will encourage people to sign up to complete the very easy blood transfusion.
“It’s simpler than a Covid test and takes barely any time at all. We just need people to click on the link and sign up. The money will change their life if they can change my granddaughter’s.
“The biggest problem for Elaiya is purely not enough Asian, ethnic minorities or south Asian country’s people being on the donor list. They just don’t go on it.”
On the Instagram campaign page parents Summan and Muzahir Hameed say: “We’ve just been informed by doctors that Elaiya falls into the ‘high risk’ group. This means the standard course of treatment (chemotherapy) isn’t sufficient to help her fight this successfully.
“We’ve begun the search for a bone marrow donor and we desperately need your help. Our daughter has the spirit of a fighter; Elaiya melts the hearts of all those who meet her.”
Mr Iqbal said the whole family had been “devastated” by Elaiya’s diagnosis. The family have joined forces with the Anthony Nolan charity, which helps connect patients and strangers ready to donate stem cells – and holds a register of 16-30-year-old stem cell donors.
The family arranged a surgery in Bristol at which over 200 people were tested. They processed 198 positive registrations at the fourhour swab test clinic, the second highest the charity has ever recorded.
Two were found to be positive matches for other cancer patients looking for donors – but a match has still not been found for Elaiya.
The family is now visiting cities around the country with further clinics.
They hosted a surgery in Birmingham on July 12.
Mr Iqbal added that the cancer patients of Asian and BAME descent were less likely to be successful in finding a donor, purely due to the number of people on the register.
He explained: “For Asian and BAME communities, the ratio of finding a match for a stem cell donor in the UK is less than 30 percent – whereas an English person has a chance of 90 percent and above of finding a match.
“We just haven’t got enough people from our communities registered, but finding out now that so many individuals are starting to register since we began the campaign is amazing.
“My granddaughter is obviously touching hearts and waking people up.”
Mr Iqbal said: “We were able to take her out for a day to Hyde Park with the family.
“Elaiya has got very low immunity levels at the moment so we weren’t allowed to mix too closely with her, but she is back at the hospital starting round two of chemo. “Chemotherapy is hard enough but for an 18-month-old baby it’s unimaginable.
“It just means finding a match is critical.” Mr Iqbal says he would not be able to see his granddaughter for three to four weeks now, but her parents would be able to visit her in hospital.
He added: “Our campaign is working but we just have to keep going and finding the match for Elaiya.
“If through her we find matches for other patients that’s amazing anyway – as we have done – because saving someone’s life is incredible. “But the main goal is to save her’s as well. She means the world to us.”
Dr Suhail Asghar, of the NHS Blood and Transplant Clinical Directorate, said that fewer people from BAME communities registered to donate stem cells in the UK.
“We do not have awareness in the BAME community about how important it is to become a bone marrow donor, so it is not being promoted, until the issue is faced,” he added.
“The chances of success in children of having a normal life after a bone marrow transplant is between 80 percent to 90 percent,” he added.
To register as a stem cell donor, go to anthonynolan.org/help-save-alife/join-stem-cell-register (16-30-year-olds) or to dkms.org.uk/ get-involved/become-a-donor (up to 55).
To read more about Elaiya’s journey fighting Acute Myeloid Leukaemia, see her Instagram page at instagram.com/fightforelaiya/
This is a matter of life and death. She means the world to us
Mazhar Iqbal, grandfather