7-YO Kid Suffering From Thalassemia Gets A New Lease Of Life

Y. Sarvesh, a 7 year old kid who was waging a losing battle against thalassemia gets a new lease of life when he found a stem cell donor match for himself. The kid had been suffering from this fatal blood disorder ever since he was 4 years old. This disease severely affects haemoglobin production. Yoga Raju, his father, is a businessman from Dindigul in Tamil Nadu and mother Devi Rathi had almost lost hope of saving their child. And it all changed when the family received a call from Chennai's Datri Blood Cell Stem Donor's Registry where someone from Hyderabad wished to donate his stem cell for the surgery.

Stem cell donor saves 7 year old kid
Photo Credit: istock

Where the odds of getting a biological match for such an operation are very high, this call was a saviour for them. Though things had been going smooth, the boy received blood transfusion every three weeks, he was finally declared out of danger after the therapy.

It was an emotional scene in Vijayawada when the donor and the recipient met at an event organized by Datri. Parents of the little boy were in tears when they met the 32-year old donor, B. Chaitanya for the first time, months after his selfless act. Sarvesh's mother stood with folded hands. Where she and her husband had lost all hopes of saving their child, they thanked Datri co-founder and CEO Raghu Rajagopal and their team for helping them achieve 'the impossible.'

Mr Yoga Raju says "Chaitanya is now a member of our family."

Chaitanya too was glad about this and said, "I felt very happy to hear that I was a potential match. The fact that my effort saved the life of this innocent child makes me proud. It is the biggest joy."

Dr. Rajagopal revealed that Datri has 2,38,733 potential blood stem cell donors till now has been successful in saving 290 lives. Apparently it's a small number but the odds of finding a match donor is just one in 10,000 to 2 million.