Bangalore, June 3 2015: DATRI, India’s largest blood stem cell donors registry dedicated to saving lives of people suffering from life threatening blood disorders, recently marked a significant milestone of completing 100th unrelated blood stem cell donation. Mr. Gopal Vachhani, 44 yrs. old working in Dubai became the 100th donor and under the supervision of Dr. Paresh Vyasa (Consultant, Transfusion Medicine) the collection took place in Apollo Hospitals, Ahmedabad. Mr. Vachhani is the fifth life saver from Dubai, registered under DATRI.
DATRI has successfully completed over 638 blood stem cell registration drives across India and currently has built a database of over 92,000 donors from different ethnic backgrounds in India who have voluntarily registered themselves with DATRI. On 26th April 2011, Mr. Ajit Kumar Das from Odisha was the first voluntary blood stem cell donor whose wonderful act of kindness was facilitated by DATRI at Apollo Hospitals, Chennai. Since then, DATRI has helped unite strangers at birth to become blood brothers and sisters for life.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Paresh Vyasa said “Every Matched Unrelated Donor (MUD) of blood stem cells is not less than GOD to the recipient and DATRI plays the role of an angel to make it happen. Congratulations to DATRI for igniting rays of hope in the darkness of 100 patients. My appeal to people is to grab this opportunity to save someone’s life. “
Blood cancer can affect anyone and the chances of finding a cure within one’s own family is just 25%. If no cure is possible from siblings, the patients have to look out for voluntary blood stem cell donors from specialized registries like Datri who maintain a database of the HLA types of the volunteers who register in a simple process during the blood stem cell registration drives referred to above.
Patients need donors who are a close genetic match. More than a lakh of people have been diagnosed with blood cancer in India and the numbers are increasing at an alarming rate every passing year. Besides, 15,000 children are diagnosed with life threatening disorders like thalassemia and blood cancer annually.
Sharing his thought on completing 100 donations, Mr. Raghu Rajagopal, Co-founder & CEO, DATRI said, “It is a proud moment for me and for everyone associated with DATRI. Reaching a milestone of 100th donation was not easy for us, particularly in our country where the awareness levels on this issue is very low. I am thankful to Mr. Vachhani who flew down to India especially for the donation. We need many more such kind souls to come forward and register with us as nothing can be more self-satisfying than giving someone a new lease of life.”
“The awareness about peripheral blood stem cell transplant is low in India and the number of registered donors is not significant at all, despite our country being home to 1.2 billion people. If there are 20 million registered donors in the world, in India with a population of 1.2 billion, there are just over one lakh registered prospective blood stem cell donors. We hope that we will be able to make a difference to many more lives and at the very least find a matched donor for the over 1,000 patients who have reached out to us and are still looking for a match” added Raghu Rajagopal.
Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Chirag Shah, Director Haemato-Oncology Apollo Hospital, Ahmedabad said, “Congratulations to DATRI on achieving a century, this century is bigger than anything. This is about gifting a life, and giving hope to patients. What DATRI has been able to do is start a movement in India, under very difficult circumstances .May God bless DATRI team. My best wishes to DATRI to get to the next 100 much faster. We hope that a lot more youngsters will join the movement and be a saviour for someone’s life, be a hero in someone’s life.”
“Awareness about blood stem cell transplantation is relatively high in the developed countries. As the treatment of choice for blood disorders is slowly spreading to the developing world including India, we are hoping to see a considerable rise in the awareness level here as well” added Dr. Shah.
About DATRI
Chennai-based, DATRI is a non – governmental organisation set up in the year 2009, with a mission to save lives of people suffering from life threatening blood disorders like leukemia, lymphoma, etc anywhere across the globe. It was co-founded by Raghu Rajagopal, Dr. Nezih Cereb and Dr. Soo Young Yang. DATRI has successfully created the largest and most credible database of over 90,000 voluntary stem cell donors. The organisation has successfully facilated 100 transplants, across 22 transplant centres. Of these, 6 have been for patients being treated overseas.
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