High school students in York Region are stepping up to be potential bone marrow transplant donors in honour of the daughter of a local high school teacher.
Sarah Watkin was just seven-years-old and on the waiting list to receive a liver transplant. Sadly, Sarah passed away last fall.
“Eventually after repeated relapses we knew we’re going to have to go to a bone marrow transplant and unfortunately we could not find a match”, said Sarah’s father Mark Watkin.
Mark has advocated tirelessly for “One Match”, a program through the Canadian Blood Services that connects people who are sick with stem cells.
There are about 10, 000 people in Canada waiting on stem cells and many of them are cancer patients. The challenge is finding a perfect match.
“Even in someone’s family they have about a 25 per cent chance of finding a match, so it can be quiet challenging”, said Michael Betel with Canadian Blood Services. “We have 340, 000 in the registry in Canada and still it's very difficult to find a match so we need as many people as we can in a registry”, he said.
The ideal stem cell donor is a young adult in good health. That’s why swabbing clinics are going to rotate through 332 high schools across York Region.
More than 160 students at Westmount Collegiate Institute took a few minutes Monday to take the test.
This initiative has been successful in the past, as last year 3 students tested positive for a perfect match.
