‘Cypriot donor for to save Greek boy’

THE CYPRUS Bone Marrow and Platelets Donor Registry would not yesterday confirm whether the bone marrow to save the life of a seven-year-old boy suffering from a rare form of leukaemia in Greece had come from a local donor.
No one was available for comment at the Karaiskakio Foundation, citing “patient confidentiality”.

Mainland Greek media went big on the story, claiming the match for the boy, known as Lefteris, had been found on the international donor registry and had come from Cyprus.
According to press reports, the patient, who lives in Salonica and sufferers from a rare form of leukaemia, only had one in 30,000 chance of finding a bone marrow match.
The disease has already caused the seven-year-old to go blind and without the procedure doctors said he will become paralysed.

Speaking on Greek radio yesterday, the child’s parents thanked the Greek public and everyone who had responded to their appeal and come forward to donate blood to test for a possible match. They said their son had a positive outlook and that he had a good feeling everything would turn out alright.

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.