Glenwood mural shines a light on blood cancer
The mural, painted by artist Kev7, features a portrait of little Naledi, one of hundreds of children lost to cancer.
A NEW mural was unveiled in Glenwood on Friday, August 25 – with an important message ahead of Sunflower Day. The mural pays tribute to Naledi, one of hundreds of children who lost their lives to blood cancer in recent years.
The mural, painted by artist Kev7, features a portrait of little Naledi, along with information about DKMS’s work. DKMS stands for ‘Deutsche Knochenmarkspenderdatei’, or German Bone Marrow Donor Centre. In 2021, The Sunflower Fund became DKMS Africa. According to Nabiella De Beer of DKMS, 500 children lost their lives to blood cancer in 2020.
“We included this statistic on the wall to show the plight of blood cancer in the country,” said De Beer.
Donors who sign up will be added to the DKMS registry. They will be called upon to donate stem cells if they are matched with a patient in need – usually someone of the same ethnic background.
“Something really important for people to know is that if you have blood cancer or a blood disorder, and you need a stem-cell match, having donors of the same ethnicity available improves your chances of finding a match. This comes down to genetics. Seventy-five percent of the eleven million donors we currently have on the global DKMS registry are white people,” said De Beer.
Donors of African, Asian and Indian decent make up just 25% of the donor pool available to children and patients with life-threatening blood disorders.
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“The statistics are very low for people of colour. Statistically, a white patient with a blood disorder has a seventy-five percent chance of finding a donor match. If you are of African decent, there is only a nineteen percent chance of finding a match. We need black, coloured, Indian and Asian South Africans to sign up to be donors for patients like Naledi who wasn’t given a second chance simply because there wasn’t a donor available,” explained De Beer.
While blood transfusions across racial groups is not an issue, ethnicity and race matters when it comes to stem cell donations.
“The chance of finding a matching donor comes down to genetics, therefore your chance of finding a match usually comes from the same ethnic group as yourself. However, this is not always the case; in the past, we had an Indian patient matching with a Polish donor. There is a 1:100 000 chance of finding a match. In other words, we are looking for the patient’s genetic twin.
According to DKMS, tissue characteristics vary from person to person – but they are also different between ethnicities.
What happens if you become a donor?
People between the ages of 19 and 55 who are in good health can sign up to become donors. To sign up, potential donors will need to fill out a questionnaire on the website: www.dkms-africa.org. DKMS will assess the donor’s answers and contact them if they are eligible to become a donor. DKMS will then send the donor a swab kit, and donors will need to swab their cheek and send their swab back. The swab will be sent to the DKMS lab in Germany, and the donor will be added to the registry. If the donor matches with a patient, DKMS will contact them. The donor will have the opportunity to decide if they want to go ahead with the procedure. If they agree, there will be a once-off stem-cell donation which is similar to a blood donation.
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“A needle is inserted into the donor’s arm. The donor’s blood goes into a machine that separates the stem cells from the blood. The blood is then returned back into the patient’s other arm. The procedure takes about four to six hours. Those few hours can give another person a lifetime,” said De Beer.
More about the mural
The mural was painted to raise awareness about the work DKMS does – searching for donors to sign up and save a life.
“We sell a tube of hope, called a TOPE, but people often don’t understand what our cause is all about. To bring awareness to our cause, we decided to bring life to some of the patients who have lost their lives to blood cancers and blood disorders. We tried to do this in a dignified way and in a way that people would remember,” said De Beer.
