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Three-year-old Joseph needs a bone marrow transplant if he wants to survive. His parents have launched a call on social networks.
Joseph, 3 years old, suffering from bone marrow cancer, needs an urgent transplant. “His daily life has been the hospital since he was 17 months old”, says Katinka Ranbert-Cadré, her mother. The child has undergone more than two years of chemotherapy, a treatment which was to end ten days ago. “We had the hope of returning to normal life, the last day of treatment. That’s when we learned about the relapse”, says Katinka. Joseph’s story is far from isolated.
Every year, 1,300 more people need a bone marrow transplant, with a one in a million chance of finding a perfectly matched donor. The Biomedicine Agency is doing its best to find volunteers. To become a potential donor, you have to volunteer, and wait to receive a collection kit, by La Poste. “The equivalent of 5 minutes”, assures Dr. Catherine Fucher, hematologist from the biomedicine agency. 330,000 people are referenced in the database. For 80% transplants, a simple blood test is enough. The Biomedicine Agency is primarily looking for young men aged 18 to 35.