Cape Town - In light of World Blood Donor Day, which was observed earlier this week, DKMS Africa is urgently seeking more people of colour to register as donors.
The non-profit organisation, which is devoted to fighting blood cancer, revealed that more than 70% of donors are Caucasians and that only 0.04% of South Africans are donors, which does not reflect the racial and genetic diversity present in local communities, resulting in blood cancer patients of African descent and mixed ethnicity having less of a chance to find a blood stem cell donor.
Raising the red flag, DKMS Africa’s medical director, Dr Theo Gerdener, said that the problem herein is that the largest donor registries are mostly of European descent.
“As South Africans, we come from very many different ethnic and racial backgrounds, and this is reflected in our genetic material or DNA. As someone of German descent, my genetic material closely resembles that of my ancestors in Europe, while a person whose ancestry is purely African will be very different from myself.
“The problem herein is that the largest donor registries are situated in Germany and the United States, meaning that donors in these registries are mostly of European descent and will not be able to donate stem cells to people of African descent. In South Africa, only 0.04% of the population is registered as stem cell donors, and, unfortunately, these donors also do not reflect the racial and genetic diversity present in our local communities,” said Gerdener.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), in low-income countries, a majority of blood transfusions are given to children under five years of age and to manage pregnancy-related complications, making regular donations by voluntary donors a critical tool in supporting complex medical and surgical procedures.
Head of medical resources at DKMS Africa, Erna West, said that even though South Africa has limited infrastructure and trained transplant teams in comparison to Europe and the USA, the biggest and most critical challenge to provide access to allogeneic transplantation is available healthy ethnic donors.
“The availability of a suitably matched donor is essential for the treatment of certain cancers/diseases with an allogeneic transplant. Patients receiving blood stem cell transplants are matched with a volunteer donor through a test called HLA tissue typing. Transplant physicians start looking for a matching sibling donor but will extend the search when no matching sibling donor is available to find an unrelated matched donor from the DKMS Africa Registry.
“The chances of finding a matched sibling donor is 1 in 4. The chances of finding a matched unrelated donor is, at best, 1 in 100 000 (0.01%) within your ethnic group, which means that if you are a Xhosa-speaking individual, you will have a chance of finding a matched unrelated donor if there are 100 000 Xhosa speaking donors on the registry.
“At the moment, the donors on the registries are not representative of the population in South Africa, and consequently, not all patients have equal options to specialised treatments. More than 70% of donors are Caucasian. We need to change the way donors have been recruited and step up with the right plan to create awareness, educate and recruit ethnic donors for our ethnic patients,” said West.
The organisation’s director-general, Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, said that despite the need for more people of colour to partake in the process, blood stem cell therapy in South Africa also faces a challenge of the shortage of trained haematologists who are able to attend to patients in rural areas.
“There is a dearth of haematologists in South Africa, with only a handful being trained and a scarcity of haematology centres in the country. Currently, there are a few haematologists practising in South Africa, and it is for this reason that we as haematologists are always engaging with universities to train and create more positions for the profession.
“Doing so will allow us to increase our geographical availability and enable us to attend to patients in rural areas who do not have the luxury of going to nearby healthcare facilities or the finances to travel to facilities in urban areas to seek specialised medical intervention,” said Ghebreyesus.
Gugulethu Ximba, 38, who was diagnosed with Leukaemia last year, said with her mother being diagnosed with the same disease, more African people need to become aware of the fact that blood cancer is more common.
“My mother passed away of the same condition, but I know that there have been a lot of medical advancements since then. I know from personal experience what a blood cancer diagnosis can do to a person and their family.
“Black people need to understand that blood cancer is more common than we think and that we can help each other through this by registering to become blood stem cell donors. By registering, you give other families hope, and we have a greater chance of beating this disease. We need to be represented on the donor registry, and the only way we can do that is to act! We must educate ourselves about blood cancer, register to become donors, and encourage others in our communities to do the same. Don’t wait until it affects your family,” said Ximba.