AZUH o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.toronto_star 2006-10-02 published
Uzoma AZUH, 23: Got minorities on registry
Medical student saw need at marrow registry
His efforts led to matches for other leukemia patients
By Tanya TALAGA,
Health
Reporter
In less than a year, cancer came to Uzoma
AZUH and took his life,
but not before the 23-year-old medical student made a difference
in the lives of others.
AZUH, who suffered from a fast-moving form of leukemia, started
a movement to create awareness about the need for more ethnic
minorities to get on Canada's national bone marrow registry.
The second-year student at Wayne State University in Detroit
was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia last September.
The Windsor man, of Nigerian descent, needed a bone marrow transplant
to greatly increase his chance of survival.
Despite his efforts and those of family and Friends, that match
never came.
AZUH died August 13 of multiple organ failure after
eight rounds of chemotherapy.
While he didn't find a match, his efforts led to the pairing
of three patients with bone marrow donors, said his brother,
Ogochukwu (Ogo)
AZUH.
"He knew of (two) before he died," said
AZUH, 21. Like his big
brother, Ogo
AZUH is studying medicine at Wayne State.
Uzoma AZUH wanted to become a doctor so he could continue helping
other people, said his best friend Sonali Bhalsod, 20.
"Because of all the work he has done, two or three people will
live now," she said. "He got his wish. I couldn't possibly want
more for him than that."
Shortly after he was diagnosed with cancer,
AZUH began a campaign
in the Windsor area to make people aware of the need to get on
the bone marrow registry.
He was featured in a May 15 article in the Star about how the
national bone marrow registry is currently overwhelmingly Caucasian.
According to figures available at the time, of nearly 230,000 Canadians
registered on the unrelated donor transplant list, only 0.5 per
cent of potential donors classify themselves as black, says Canadian
Blood Services, which manages the registry.
One per cent of those on the list are aboriginal, 1.6 per cent
East Indian, 3.6 per cent Asian, 0.3 per cent Hispanic and 83 per
cent Caucasian. The others are classified as unknown.
Bone marrow is found in the breast bone, ribs, hip bones, skull
and spine. Marrow produces infection-fighting white blood cells,
oxygen-rich red blood cells and platelets used in clotting. Transplants
are used to fight immune or blood disorder diseases such as acute
myelogenous leukemia, in which the marrow produces faulty infection-fighting
cells.
"A lot of traits in the bone marrow are inherited,"
AZUH told
the Star. "I'm more likely to find a match in the ethnic community.
People don't understand how important this is."
The week prior to
AZUH's diagnosis, Ogo remembers him coughing
a lot. Then came the night sweats. One morning
AZUH woke up with
rashes "all over his body," said Ogo. His brother went to hospital
and was diagnosed days later.
Whether he was recuperating at home or from his hospital bed,
AZUH worked hard to spread the word about donating.
"His campaign was for bone marrow donation awareness and testing,
so that no one would ever have to go through what he or my family
went through," Ogo and his sister Chinye wrote in an email to
Friends shortly after their brother's death. "Uzo's philosophy
was always… if things were hard for him, he would make it easier
for the next person."
AZUH was an inspiration to those who knew him, said Ron
GILES
of Windsor, a bone marrow donor who worked with
AZUH to raise
awareness.
GILES, 42, donated his marrow to an unrelated teenage boy in
2003 and was so moved by the experience that he went to work
trying to help others find a match, setting up a website, http://www.donorcorner.com.
GILES visited
AZUH shortly before he died. "He was optimistic
everything would work out,"
GILES said. "We need to put more
emphasis on getting people on the bone marrow registry. There
could be matches out there. We need to carry on his fight."
As well as his brother and sister,
AZUH leaves his mother Margaret
and his father Doctor Victor
AZUH.
A funeral was held in August.
To learn more about the Unrelated Bone Marrow Donor Registry,
visit the Canadian Blood Services website at http://www.bloodservices.ca
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