A FAMILY is offering £20,000 to anyone who can be a stem cell or bone marrow match for an 18-month-old girl with leukaemia.
Elaiya Hameed was diagnosed with a rare cancer – acute myeloid leukaemia – in June of this year.
It can only be cured with a bone or stem cell transfusion.
Elaiya’s family are visiting cities around the country hoping to find her match before it's too late.
Grandfather Mazhar Iqbal says the family are offering £20,000 to a suitable donor and she is "running out of time."
He said: "We are offering to turn the world upside down to help my granddaughter. This is a matter of life and death.
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"We are also hoping this financial incentive will encourage people to sign up to complete the very easy blood transfusion.
"It's simpler than a Covid test and takes barely any time at all, we just need people to click on the link and sign up.
"The money will change their life if they can change my granddaughter's.”
Mr Iqbal said the whole family have been "devastated" since finding out about Elaiya's leukaemia diagnosis seven weeks ago.
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On the Instagram campaign page her parents, Summan and Muzahir Hameed, wrote: "We've just been informed by doctors that Elaiya falls into the ‘high risk’ group.
“This means the standard course of treatment (chemotherapy) isn't sufficient to help her fight this successfully.
"We've begun the search for a bone marrow donor and we desperately need your help.
"Our daughter has the spirit of a fighter; Elaiya melts the hearts of all those who meet her."
The family have now joined forces with Anthony Nolan charity, who help connect patients and strangers ready to donate their stem cells.
Anyone aged 16 to 30 years old can sign up to the charity’s database, while those aged between 17 and 55 years can sign up to DKMS.
In both cases, you simply swab a cheek and send it back in a pre-paid envelope.
If you are a match for someone with a blood cancer or blood disorder, you could help save their life by donating your stem cells.
The most common way of removing stem cells is peripheral blood stem cell collection, which isn't much different to donating blood.
If you are from a minority ethnic background, you can make an even bigger difference.
Elaiya will most likely need a donor from someone sharing her Pakistani heritage.
Mr Iqbal said: "The biggest problem for Elaiya is purely not enough Asian, ethnic minorities or south Asian country's people being on the donor list.
"They just don't go on it.
"For Asian and BAME communities, the ratio of finding a match for a stem cell donor in the UK is less than 30 per cent. Whereas an English person has a chance of 90 per cent and above of finding a match.”
"We just haven't got enough people from our communities registered, but finding out now that so many individuals are starting to register since we began the campaign is amazing.
"My granddaughter is obviously touching hearts and waking people up."
Elaiya has the same form of leukaemia as Azaylia – the daughter of ex-footballer Ashley Kaine and his now ex-girlfriend Safiyya Vorajee.
Azaylia tragically died of the disease in April 2021, but her heartbreaking story inspired at least 56,000 people to join the Anthony Nolan stem cell register.
The family of Elaiya managed to arrange a surgery in Bristol where over 200 people showed up for swab tests.
In total, they were able to process 198 positive registrations over four hours – the second highest the charity has ever recorded.
Two were found to be positive matches for other cancer patients looking for donors, but sadly a match has still not been found for Elaiya.
The family are hosting a surgery in Birmingham today and one in Nottingham on 24 July.
Elaiya has been receiving care at Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham and just just finished her first round of chemotherapy.
Mr Iqbal said: "We were able to take her out for a day to Hyde Park with the family.
"Elaiya has got very low immunity levels at the moment so we weren't allowed to mix too closely with her, but she is back at the hospital starting round two of chemo.
"Chemotherapy is hard enough but for an 18-month-old baby it's unimaginable.
"It just means finding a match is critical.
"If through her we find matches for other patients that's amazing anyway – as we have done – because saving someone's life is incredible.
"But the main goal is to safe her's as well, she means the world to us."
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Dr Suhail Asghar, Clinical Directorate, NHS Blood and Transplant, said: "We do not have awareness in the BAME community about how important it is to become a bone marrow donor, so it is not being promoted, until the issue is faced.
"The chances of success in children of having a normal life after a bone marrow transplant is between 80 to 90 per cent.”
Click here to sign up if you are under 30, or click here for up to 55 years old.
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