Employment and labor attorney Neeti Sundaresh has launched a hunt to find a matching bone marrow donor to save her father’s life who is battling blood cancer. But in the process, the Ohio-based Indian American lawyer could end up saving many more lives.
In her quest for finding the right donor for her father, she has created ‘Swab for Sundaresh,’ a series of blood marrow donor drives throughout Ohio and other parts of the U.S.
Her father, Dr. Sundaresh, devoted his life to taking care of children as a pediatrician in Cleveland, and only recently retired in December 2016, Sundaresh wrote on the Facebook page @Swabforsundaresh, adding that he is a loving husband, father and grandfather and loves to golf, travel and spend time with his family.
Dr. Sundaresh was diagnosed with high risk MDS, a failure of his bone marrow, and was given a very grim prognosis in June 2017. His only hope for a cure is to undergo a transplant from a matching donor. He currently has no matches in the donor registry, she explained, since his best chance of finding a match is within the South Asian community.
“We just need that magic match,” she was quoted as saying by the news site. “If there’s no match for dad, we can save another life.” She also wants to inform the South Asian community about the lack of diversity in tissue and organ donor banks, reported Cleveland.com.“This is a big public-health issue and people aren’t aware,” Sundaresh said. “There is a real need, as the South Asian community is underrepresented in the registries,” she wrote. Registration can be done through https://join.bethematch.org/sundaresh