Help save Sameer’s life…

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a few weeks now, but didn’t want to spread the word until I had the green light. My friend Sameer Bhatia has been diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML), a cancer of the blood, and is in urgent need of a bone marrow transplant.

The added difficulty in this situation is that Sameer needs to find a match within the South Asian community and there just aren’t enough South Asians in the bone marrow registry. I read a statistic somewhere that a Caucasian person in need of bone marrow finds 5 matches on average. Meanwhile, a South Asian person in need finds 0-1. This should not be the case – there are over 1 billion Indians in the world!!

If you are ethnically South Asian, please register to donate bone marrow and encourage your friends and families to do the same – it’s so easy (literally an application form and a cheek swab)! If you have the time and motivation, help to set up a bone marrow drive in your area… especially if you live somewhere with a dense population of South Asians.

I’ve known Sameer for about 6 years now… He’s an incredible person and has always been a good friend and mentor to me. He is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, a Stanford alum, but most importantly is known to many for his efforts in launching the American India Foundation, Project DOSTI, TiE (Chicago), a microfinance fund, and other initiatives focused on helping others. The world is a better place because of people like him and it would be a terrible tragedy to lose him out of apathy.

Please help.