 "Photo: Miko Walczuk")
 "Photo: Brian Tseng")
Students could have a chance to save an 8-year-old boy’s life today at a bone marrow donor registry drive at Campus Center from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
“We’ve been looking for a match since August and we still haven’t found one,” said Nelson Ganeku, father of the boy, Mitchell.
Ganeku, a plumber at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, said Mitchell is stable now because he is on medication, but they are going to eventually have to phase him off the medication.
“We need to start looking (for a donor) now but it might be too late,” Ganeku said.
While the event is focused on Mitchell, students who register and take a mouth-swab test will enter their name into a list of potential matches for anyone who needs a bone marrow transplant.
“There are a lot of other people who need a match,” Ganeku said.
Roy Yonashiro of the Hawai‘i Bone Marrow Registry said if students are even thinking about becoming a bone marrow donor and are not sure, they should come by and learn about the process.
“You never know who might need a transplant, so we tell people join now before it’s too late,” Yonashiro said.
“I stress that there are no needles,” he added.
Yonashiro said the entire registration process takes 10 minutes.
“It’s very, very simple,” Yanashiro said. “If you ever stood in line to register for classes, then this is a lot faster than that.”
Yonashiro said students must be 18 to 60, in good health, and supply two contacts who they don’t live with in case the Bone Marrow Registry needs to contact them if a match comes up. It is free to register, and bone marrow donors pay nothing if they are a match.
“They sign up with the intent of helping someone they might never meet,” Yonashiro said.
He said people who have already registered do not need to reregister.
“They will stay in the registry until they are 61 years old and we will contact them if they are a match,” Yonashiro said.
The bone marrow drive hopes to find a match for Mitchell, who has aplastic anemia, a blood disorder that causes the body to not produce enough platelets and red and white blood cells, and if untreated could progress to leukemia.
“He needs a transplant to survive,” Yonashiro said.
A bone marrow transplant is a procedure in which a healthy donor donates their marrow stem cells, which go straight into the patient’s bloodstream so they can reproduce, according to beamatch.org.
According to the Web site, it is not possible to predict whether someone will be a match for a patient.
“Every person who joins the registry gives patients hope, and new patient searches begin every day. You may never be identified as a match for someone, or you might be one of a number of potential matches. But you may be the only one on the registry that can save someone’s life,” according to the Web site.
Ganeku said Mitchell has been doing “a lot of indoor stuff” such as playing video games, driving a remote-control truck and watching wrestling.
“He misses a lot things,” Ganeku said. “He misses his friends and he can’t play sports.”
Ganeku said he is thankful for all the people who have helped his family, including the doctors at Kaiser Permanente, Mānoa Elementary School for holding a bone marrow drive last week, the University of Hawai‘i, the media for helping get the word out, and family and friends.
“The family is very grateful for all the love and prayers,” Ganeku said.
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