Leukemia survivor gives it with Swab the World campaign

When a second leukemia was diagnosed in Mai Duong in 2014 and she needed a stem cell transplant, she learned an uncomfortable truth about donor registries in Canada and around the world, which now depends on her survival.

Most donors are white, and in this case and in this case only, the breed was importing.

Duong, a Quebec advertising strategist of Vietnamese descent, decided to mobilize the power of advertising to find a donor and save her life.

The Sauver Mai Duong campaign, featuring the young mother and her five-year-old daughter, Alice, on billboards in the streets, online and in the press, deeply touched Quebeckers and won awards. advertising price.

This also drove about 2,000 Vietnamese-Canadians to sign up for stem cell donations and three Asians with blood disorders found matches, two in Canada and one in the United States.

But after two months, a deadline set by his doctors, Duong still had not found the ideal partner.

Fortunately, she quickly found a compatible umbilical cord to fight the disease – a gift from an unidentified mother to another – and won.

Four years later, Duong does not suffer from cancer and is back in advertising.

But she promised herself that if she did succeed, she would do something for the other 18,000 patients around the world who were still looking for a stem cell match – who could not run their own campaigns.

On Tuesday, she launched the "Swab the World" foundation, so they do not have to.

"The problem is that in different countries, in the United States and Europe, there are not many ethnic donors," Duong said, adding that Vietnam did not have a registry. "It was a huge problem that I had to deal with and to which every non-Caucasian patient was confronted. Finding a match is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

With unusual photos and videos, the new campaign encourages everyone, but especially non-whites, to "share their DNA" and "give the kiss of life".

It tells people how to do it: In Quebec, you can register to donate by contacting Héma-Québec. The organization will send a cotton swab kit through the mail. You dab your cheek and send it back. The only conditions are that you are between 18 and 35 years old and that you are ready to donate stem cells "to anyone, anywhere, anytime" until the age of 60.

Since the Canadian registry is linked to the international database, you can donate to Canada to save someone in France and vice versa.

Unfortunately, existing registers tend to be underrepresentative of ethnic minorities.

Worldwide, 70% of registered stem cell donors are Caucasian, according to Duong, although about 88% of the world's population is not Caucasian.

According to Canadian Blood Services and Héma-Québec, in Canada, 70% of registered stem cell donors were Caucasians, 15% were Asians and 1.4% were blacks.

Ethnicity counts, said Duong, because the best donors tend to come from the same pool of ethnic genes as the patient.

For Caucasian patients, the likelihood of finding a match among anonymous donors in the global stem cell registry is 75-80%. It is 20 to 25% for patients of African origin and 15% for those of Asian origin.

"We are all created equal, until we have to fight against the cancer of the blood."

Because of this reality, many children and adults are struggling to find a partner and are turning to the Duong Foundation for help in finding donors.

Sia, three years old, has leukemia and lives in the United States. She is Filipino, African American and Caucasian.

Aaryan Dinh-Ali is 13 years old and lives in Toronto. He is afro-vietnamese and suffers from aplastic anemia. He has been on immunosuppressive therapy and is currently in remission.

Rochlind Kate Mance, 16, lives in Alberta and is Filipino. She suffers from aplastic anemia and another blood disease, PNH, for which the treatment costs $ 500,000 a year and that the Alberta government will not cover.

Then comes Rémi Veilleux, whose ethnicity is listed as "Canadian". He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. When he did not respond to chemotherapy, he found a stem cell match with an 18-year-old European. He has been cancer free for almost three years.

In an update on swabtheworld.com, Veilleux said: "Not all superheroes wear capes or super powers. Mine was 18 years old and had a compatible bone marrow.

Duong believes that more lives can be saved through smart, noble advertising that informs the public of the need to donate.

"It's a communication problem – most people have never heard of stem cell donations," she said, adding that the foundation hoped to see a million donors added to global registries over the next few years. next ten years.

At the same time, Duong is also publishing a book, The Baby Lioness's Courage, which tells her story of hardship and resilience seen through her daughter's eyes.

"I wrote it myself when I was sick," she said of the book, released on November 7. "If Alice died, it would be a legacy for Alice. When I did not die, I thought I had to publish that. "

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