Cancer patient needs Londoners who have one parent from Nigeria to help her stay alive as her husband is already on a wheelchair after an accident and, her two children are too young to be left alone in this world.
A mother in Germany hoping for a life-saving stem cell transplant today launched a search for the donor in London.
Astrid, 41, received a shock diagnosis of aggressive blood cancer — acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) — in September last year after going to the doctor with a fever and inflamed mouth and throat.
The HR manager, from Frankfurt, underwent five rounds of chemotherapy but has been told she needs a stem cell transplant within months to survive. She recently lost her only match found during months of searching.
She is of Nigerian-German descent, and according to UK and Germany-based blood cancer charity DKMS, fewer than three per cent of registered blood stem cell donors in Europe have mixed-background genetics. In the UK, black and Asian people have a 20 per cent chance of finding a match.
Astrid and her husband Florian, 43, who have already launched an appeal in Germany, are now turning to the capital for help as London has the largest Nigerian diaspora in Europe.
The family are asking Londoners with one parent from the Ibo or Igbo ethnic group, like Astrid’s father, and one parent of wider European descent to take a simple home swab test to see if they are a match. Potential donors must be aged between 17 and 55 and in general good health.
She told the Standard: “Every other patient I met in the hospital who was in need of a stem cell donation found an eligible donor. I have found no match so far. The thought of not seeing my little boys grow up is unbearable to me. I would be grateful to Londoners for their help.”
The couple have two sons, aged nine and 11. Florian, a lawyer, uses a wheelchair following a motorbike accident in 2014.
He said: “Our children are doing quite well. They have already seen one parent in hospital for a year and continue with life, but we have not given them the full picture, that if there is not a good return to the campaign their mother may no longer be here.
“Only about three per cent of the people registered worldwide on databases are of mixed background — that is a very clear, unbearable disadvantage. There are up to 150,000 people in the UK with relation to Nigeria, so it is very important to us to start a campaign in the UK.”
Donors’ data will be uploaded on to a UK-wide stem cell database.
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