Toddler with rare leukaemia needs £40K to help find half Caucasian half Japanese bone marrow donor
  • 2 years ago
The parents of two-year-old with rare leukaemia have launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise £40k to find a donor - who is half Caucasian half Japanese. Two-year-old Flaminia Pugliese has been in Nanbu Children's Hospital in Okinawa, Japan since January 14. She was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer called Myeloid Leukaemia AML (Acute Myeloid Leukemia) M7. Flaminia received several course of chemotherapy but is now in need of a bone marrow transplant. Dad Thomas Pugliese is Italian and mum Naraha Pugliese is Japanese, which means that her donor needs to have similar genetics. Thomas and Naraha were not able to find a suitable donor in Japan, so they are now appealing internationally, which will cost around £40,000. The couple have launched a crowdfunding campaign with a target of ¥3,000,000, which is around half the funds needed after doctors first wrongly estimated the cost. The NHS describe this type of leukaemia as "rare" with only 3,100 people being diagnosed each year in the UK, while Cancer.net states it makes up around 1% of cancers. So far, Flaminia has been through various stages of chemotherapy to destroy cancerous and non-cancerous cells in her bone marrow. She is now receiving consolidation therapy to destroy remaining cancer cells.
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