A TURKISH Cypriot boy whose leukaemia sparked a worldwide search for a suitable bone marrow donor has lost a race against time, and his heartbroken father is taking him back home from Britain to Nicosia.
“I missed the train at the station. His chances are gone,” Sua Saracoglu told Reuters yesterday after doctors said his 13-year-old son Kemal was no longer in remission and had missed his chance to have a life-saving transplant.
The race to find donors for Kemal and for Greek Cypriot Andreas Vassiliou brought the island’s divided communities together ealier in the year as politics took a back seat in the fight to save the boys’ lives.
Tens of thousands of people on both sides gave blood in the hope of finding a match. Turkey and Greece also joined the Greek and Turkish communities in Britain and Australia in a race against time.
Earlier this month, Sua Saracoglu jubilantly announced that a suitable donor had been found for his son.
The donor was finally discovered in Turkey and a transplant date was set for the end of July at the London hospital where his son is being treated.
But then the British doctors called him in for a meeting. “They were very upset. We found out that Kemal had gone out of remission. That means that the cancer cells are attacking him again,” Saracoglu said.
“We were unable to do the transplant. We are very upset. I am planning to take him back home to Nicosia for palliative treatment. The doctors say it is the appropriate decision.
“It happened because there is no good organisation to co-ordinate between bone marrow donors worldwide. The Istanbul registry has not been updated since February 1999,” he said.
But how did he break the news to his son?
“I talked to him. I cannot tell my son I am taking him home to Cyprus to die. I have told him we will have a break. But Kemal is a very intelligent boy. He knows he is out of remission but he doesn’t know he has missed his chance.”
Kemal Saracoglu was diagnosed in Ankara last December and then treated in London’s Royal Free Hospital, where his father kept watch by his bedside.
Andreas Vassiliou, aged six, was diagnosed last year and has already undergone chemotherapy in the United States. “Andreas had a transplant from a placenta in late April and I am told he is doing well,” Saracoglu said.
“We wish him all the best. First of all we are human beings. Everyone is like that in the world.”
