Amit and Dan-Dan – two little lives desperate for help
February 10, 2009 by J-Wire
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Shula Endrey-Walder’s Gift Of Life organisation is trying to find a suitable bone marrow match to offer the gift of life to two seriously ill Israeli children.
Dan-Dan Nevo
The Gift of Life is a non-denominational international organisation. Endrey-Walder told J-Wire that years of experience had shown that
Jewish potential donors have always proved to be more successful in providing a suitable match…but it is often necessary to search the entire Jewish
world to find one
For more details on what can be done to give Amit Kadosh and Dan-Dan Nevo normal lives, click here
Amit Kadosh
There are approximately 35,000 Jews in Australia who today have a chance to Save a Life. Two Israeli children, 6 year old Amit Kadesh and 3 year old Dan-Dan Nevo ‘s little bodies are being ravished by an aggressive form Leukaemia and as they lay in The Schnieder Children’s Hospital almost dying, their distraught and courageous parents appealed to Gift of Life Australia to help search for an unrelated donor whose tissue type would match their children so that their leukaemia would be cured with an urgent stem cell transplant.The life threatening disease Leukaemia, cancer of the white blood cells, can be cured with a stem cell [blood] or bone marrow transplant. Only 1 in 3 patients find a match within their immediate family, the other 68% need to look for unrelated donors. As tissue type is ethnically related, their only chance of finding a match is within their own community. In this case, the world wide Jewish community. Even then this probability is only 1 in 50, 000. Tragically neither Omer, Amit’s older brother nor anyone from Dan-Dan’s family was found to be compatible .Potential donors must be between 18-45 years of age, in good health and need to complete a routine Red Cross medical questionnaire and have a simple blood test (2 spoonfuls). Over 1 million transplants have been performed worldwide with no long term adverse side effects to the donors ever reported.
In the last 15 years Shula Endrey-Walder Founder of Gift of Life Australia has tested over 6000 potential donors onto the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry. She hopes that many of the potential donors in Australia who are still available to be tested, will come forward to be registered in order to save the lives of Amit and Dan-Dan and several other patients. …… ” becoming a potential donor is a real simple mitzvah and ‘one who saves a life ….it is as if he has saved an entire world !‘ “Registration and testing takes place every Sunday morning at Wolper Jewish Hospital by appointment. For further information and/or to make an appointment please contactinfo@giftoflifeaustralia.org.au or Shula 0414 780 444
