Little Jeremy Kong Gets a Donor

In the last edition of Asian Fortune we mentioned the worldwide search to find a matching bone marrow donor for two year old Jeremy Kong of San Francisco, who has been suffering with a rare form of leukemia. The problem is that ethnicity plays a role in finding suitable matches, and Asian Americans, and Asians worldwide, have been slower than other nationalities to register as potential donors. The result is that it is more difficult for ill Asians to take advantage of the technological advances in marrow transplants.

Jeremy was diagnosed with a rare subtype of Acute Myeloid Leukemia back in June. Since then, time has been running out for the little boy with the huge smile who enjoys physical activity, story time, and sharing things he has learned. As he got sicker, and no match was forthcoming, family and friends created a world-wide drive to spread the word about bone marrow registration, working with the Asian American Donor Program.

It has been an uphill fight. According to the National Marrow Donor Program, only 7% of registered donors in the U.S. are Asian American, some 670,000 people. The result is that Asian American patients have only a 73% chance of finding a matching donor. Worldwide, the odds are even more unbalanced, with only 109,000 Chinese donors, for example, out of about 10 million registrants.

Fortunately for Jeremy, a Chinese American, a matching anonymous donor was found in Hong Kong late in November. On November 29, Jeremy received his transplant of marrow cells in San Francisco. As we go to press, his family reports he is doing well, already up and playing with his Legos and watching a movie.

For more information, please contact the DC Metropolitan Asian Pacific American Marrow Network at http://dcmetroapamn.org/ or the Asian American Donor Program at www.aadp.org. To check on Jeremy’s progress, visit www.jeremyneedsyou.org.