Turkish Cypriots to give blood at Ledra Palace checkpoint

THE UNITED Nations are trying to organise a way for Turkish Cypriots to donate blood in the quest for a bone marrow donor to help save a six-year-old leukaemia victim.

Unficyp spokesman Charles Gaulkin yesterday told the Cyprus Mail that samples would probably be taken at the Ledra Palace check-point on Monday between 5pm and 8pm.

"We have been contacted by a number of Turkish Cypriots who have read or seen or heard of the effort going on to get samples to help the leukaemia victim (Andreas Vassiliou). They wanted to participate, they hope to contribute."

Gaulkin said Unficyp’s Civil Affairs branch had been in contact with the Karaiskakio Foundation in an effort to find a way for the samples to be collected.

The Foundation will meanwhile be receiving new machinery to help speed up sample testing with around 1,00 samples being tested a day.

In the past week alone, approximately 30,000 people have given blood samples in an effort to find a suitable donor.

Volunteers have also been making donations in Greece.

Karaiskakio Foundation vice-president Christos Andreou yesterday told the CyBC that the race against time would begin on Monday when the new machinery was put into use.

"We are bringing extra machines. A new machine arrives on Sunday at dawn with technicians and with other machines that had already been ordered and are coming from Europe with trained technicians."

"With these machines, Cyprus will be the first country, at this time, with a laboratory that can do more than 1,00 examinations a day. We asked a lot of (overseas) laboratories and they talked about doing 50 or 100 a day. You can understand what this means."

Meanwhile, young Andreas yesterday left Nicosia’s Makarios hospital after hitting his head during a routine check-up on Thursday. The boy had been kept in overnight for observation.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.