http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=236225



Editorial: The bone-marrow battle
By JPOST EDITORIAL
08/31/2011 23:05


Donating bone marrow one of most practicable, non-risky procedures to help
patients for whom strangers' donations could be sole chance for survival.


   

 
Not all battles are won in the course of a hard-fought war. Eight-year-old
Tal Shitrit of Kibbutz Nahsholim lost his struggle for life this week on the
eve of a possible turnaround. He succumbed to the leukemia that had
relentlessly attacked him for nearly three years, just when a suitable
bone-marrow donor was about to arrive from France to give him a new chance
to live.

The uncommonly handsome boy captured the hearts of Israelis during an Ezer
Mizion drive four months ago to help find a compatible tissue-type match for
what doctors defined as Tal's "complex DNA composite."

Intricate genetic mixes are prevalent in this country, a melting pot of
diverse extractions and communities.

Although some patients with leukemia or other cancers have a genetically
matched family member who can donate, about 70 percent don't. These
patients' lives depend on finding a donor, often at least partially of their
own ethnic origin.

The response to the drive to save Tal was extraordinary. Thousands stood
patiently in long queues. Total strangers appeared personally affected by
his plight. Adults aged 18-50 gave up valuable time on an ordinary workday
and waited their turn without a grumble to fill out long forms and have
blood taken from their veins. This isn't the first such drive, but the
outpouring of solidarity surprises the organizers anew each time.

Donating bone marrow is one of the most practicable, uncomplicated and
non-risky procedures to help patients for whom the gift of life from
unrelated people could be their sole chance for survival.

The ensuing process isn't simple and entails an evaluation that can take
upward of six weeks. Those whose tissue-type isn't compatible with the
patient's remain potential donors. Having been properly screened and typed,
their data is included in the Ezer Mizion bone marrow registry - the world's
largest Jewish bone-marrow donor database - where it stays accessible for
future need.

But heartwarming as the unstinted grassroots response has been in every such
drive, the fly in this otherwise most excellent of ointments is the need to
depend on the generosity of philanthropic nonprofit organizations, such as
Ezer Mizion.

The likelihood of finding a donor in existing Israeli registries is
calculated at 1 in 30,000. Significantly enlarging these registries is too
heavy a financial burden for NGOs to shoulder. The feasible solution is a
central public-run registry instead of the existing three (Ezer Mizion,
Hadassah Ein-Kerem and, the smallest, at Sheba Medical Center).

For years the Treasury had nixed all initiatives to foot the bill for such
an undertaking. Last February, however, the Knesset finally - after an
eight-year parliamentary campaign - approved legislation mandating the
establishment of an integrated government-funded centralized registry. This
should have placed the 460,000 Ezer Mizion samples, Hadassah's 60,000 and
Sheba's 1,000 in a single framework, geared for expansion.

In proportion to much weightier Treasury outlays, maintaining and enlarging
the registry is regarded as an insignificant drop in the budgetary ocean -
NIS 5 million annually. Many lives might be saved merely by removing the
managerial and financial onus from voluntary organizations. For one thing,
this could speed up the discovery of matching donors and thereby offer more
rapid help.

Thus far, however, the law notwithstanding, not an agora has been spent on
this cause. There is no excuse for foot-dragging. The sooner this strange
disinclination to action is ended, the greater the promise for desperate
patients like Tal.




Our only solace is that officialdom's vacuum is filled by a deluge of
popular generosity, compassion and cohesion. It's doubtful that the great
crowds of potential donors, who mob Ezer Mizion's testing teams, could be
equaled anywhere else on earth.

Beautiful Israel shines through as if to belie the vilification that is
unhappily its lot.

"Israel isn't merely a nation. It's one large family, united on all fronts.
I am so proud to be one of the family of Israel," said Yuval Kadosh, father
of Amit, whose life was saved in a similar Ezer Mizion drive in 2009. He
speaks for us all.

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