SINGAPORE: It was anemotional meeting for bone marrow transplant recipient Ivan Wijaya. On Friday (Nov 14), he finally came face to face with his bone marrow donor Ms Enning Yeo, more than a year after his transplant operation last October.

Ivan, 29, was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukaemia in February last year and never imagined being alive today, because finding a match is 1 in 20,000.

"When I was diagnosed with leukaemia, I just felt that I will be dead soon. But I didn't cry and I toughened myself because I didn't want to let my wife down. But in my heart, I still felt scared and didn't know what to do, he said.

Enning, who is 28, signed up for the Bone Marrow Donor Programme in 2006. She likened being selected as a donor to striking a charity lottery.

"It is an altruistic act but on a personal level, I do feel a sense of satisfaction and achievement. People talk about a bucket list of things to do. I don't have my own bucket list but if I did have one, but if I could have check off - that I saved a life - even if it's simply by donating bone marrow is something I'm very proud of, she said.

This year, 19 local donors have taken part in successful bone marrow transplants in Singapore. There were seven such donors last year.

These numbers were revealed by the Bone Marrow Donor Programme, a non-profit organisation that manages Singapore's only register of volunteer bone marrow donors. But with about 50 bone marrow transplant requests received monthly, more donors are needed.

To date, the Bone Marrow Donor Programme has some 48,000 donors on its register. But with an increasing demand for bone marrow transplants, there is an urgent need to recruit more especially from the minority groups. The aim is to recruit 7,000 new donors each year to meet this increasing demand.

CLEARING MISCONCEPTION ABOUT HARVESTING PROCEDURE A CHALLENGE

But a main challenge to get more donors on board is clearing the misconception about the harvesting procedure.

Original post:
Donor meets recipient of bone marrow transplant for the first time

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