Local actor on course to fight blood diseases

Local actor Eric Macheru teamed up with The Sunflower Fund for a national drive to create awareness and education about blood diseases and to drive interest for people to register as blood stem cell donors in Polokwane on Saturday.
Macheru hails from Seshego and is known for his role as Leeto in the popular soapie, Skeem Saam. He joined officials from the fund to take time talk to the community members about common blood disorders such as anaemia, bleeding disorders including haemophilia and blood cancers such as leukaemia, lymphoma, and myeloma.
He also called on individuals between the ages of 18 to 45 years, in general good health with a weight of more than 50 kg and a Body Mass Index (BMI) of less than 40 to register as donors.
A call was also made to companies, sports clubs, universities and colleges to invite them to come through and conduct a public drive to spread awareness and recruit donors.
Macheru said they were delighted to have managed sharing information about blood stem cell donation because there is much misinformation about it and people don’t respond, because of a lack of information.
“Patients from all ages and races find themselves in need of a transplant and in such an instance they are looking for their genetic twin. The chances of finding this match is 1:100 000 and the best chance of a match is within your own ethnic background. There is only a 25% chance that a sibling will be a match. The remaining 75% chance depends on an unrelated matching donor being found.
Black patients around the world are at a disadvantage due to the underrepresentation 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 one can only donate once and that there are no major side effects to being a donor,” Macheru explained.
Traci Sassenberg, Marketing and Communications officer at the fund said they had recruited 20 blood stem cell donors on the day. “This was the first drive The Sunflower Fund had done in the Polokwane area and we were very pleased with the turnout. The donor drive gave us an opportunity to educate and create awareness about what we do and the importance of blood stem cell donation.”
She further stated that although they would have liked to have registered more donors the exposure they received from the Polokwane community about the important cause made the drive a success for them.
“We need to do more education in the area and we need the involvement of everyone to help us to educate the community about this important work. All those who want to register and willing to consider helping anyone in need of a transplant for whom they might be a match, they can contact The Sunflower Fund and get registered telephonically on 0800 12 10 82,” Sassenberg reminded.

Story and photos: Herbert Rachuene
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