THE KARAISKAKIO Foundation yesterday pledged to do all they could to help a Turkish leukaemia patient have a life-saving bone marrow transplant.
Dr Pavlos Costeas, the director of the foundation, said, “we are working in collaboration with Turkish bone marrow donor registries but cannot comment on individual cases due to doctor-patient confidentiality.”
According to Huriyet newspaper, the treatment of Emine Ozan, 20, was stalled because the family of Umut Utlu, a previous leukaemia patient, had been unable to settle their bill due to the division of the island.
Utlu received bone marrow from the south of the island two years ago and underwent a successful operation back in Turkey.
However, Huriyet said Turkey’s Centre for Bone Marrow Transplant had not yet paid the expenses of the Karaiskakio Foundation, as agreed under the terms of the deal.
Although the money is available, the newspaper said Turkish banks had refused to handle the transaction because it involved dealing with the Republic of Cyprus, which Turkey does not recognise.
“There is no financial issue”, Dr Costeas said. “Money has not stopped us providing services in the past.”
It is believed that Ozan’s seven-year international search for a bone marrow donor has now turned up two possible matches.
Health Minister, Andreas Gavrielides said, “first of all we will try to find out who the donors who match Emine are. The donors could be Greek as well as Turkish Cypriots, we do not know yet. If the donors’ health allow for the bone marrow transplanting, this will be carried out immediately. If everything goes all right, this operation will be finished in a few days. The issue is not political and should not be used for point scoring. The Health Ministry will do all that it can to ensure the transplant goes ahead,” the Minister concluded.
But Dr Costeas warned that the process, from the initial preliminary identification of potential donors to final transplant, could be a lengthy one.
“Once a potential donor is found, tests such as tissue typing, are undertaken to see the level of the match. The donor is then contacted to see if he or she is available, healthy and willing to participate. Medical examinations and counselling sessions must also take place. ”
Costeas went on to explain that tissue type is much more complicated than blood type. There are only eight different blood types, whereas there are five billion tissue type combinations. The problem is that some tissue type combinations are very rare.
The Karaiskakio Foundation is a non-profit organisation that was established in order to organise The Cyprus Bone Marrow Donor Registry, responsible for the recruitment and management of bone marrow donors.
The foundation was set up in 1997 and began its donor recruitment in 1998, with 2,080 donors registering in the first year. In the second year 13,000 donors registered.
In 2000, there was a donor boom following a bi-communal donor drive to find a match for Greek and Turkish Cypriot leukaemia sufferers Andreas Vassiliou, aged six, and Kemal Saracoglu, 12. The campaign resulted in 57,500 additional donors registering with the Foundation.
Today, there are over 90,000 donors registered. This is the largest bone marrow donor registry per capita in the world, a record held since the registry reached 15,000 donors.
