Last summer, BlackVoices.com covered the plight of "Lion King" starlet Shannon Tavarez (pictured), who found out last April that she had an aggressive form of leukemia, acute myelogenous leukemia.
The 11-year-old desperately needed a bone marrow match in order to fight the disease. 50 Cent and Rihanna were just some of the high-powered celebs to help Tavarez find her bone marrow match.
Still, Tavarez, who received an umbilical cord transplant in place of the bone marrow transplant, died last November to the astonishment of many.
She never did find her bone marrow match.
On Thursday, Tavarez's mother, Odiney Brown, went to her alma mater, Howard University, in order to continue to raise awareness for the need of more African Americans to join the bone marrow registry. "Shannon's illness caught us completely off guard," Brown, 39, said as she encouraged Howard students to sign up for the registry. "What we found last year was that there just wasn't the awareness in our community as there could have been, and I think that has really impacted the number of available black and Latino potential donors."
Even though there are more than 9 million bone marrow donors in the National Bone Marrow Program (NBMP), only 650,000 of them (or 7 percent) are black, and it is more difficult for us to find bone marrow matches than anyone else.
According to the NBMP:
"[African Americans], whose ancestors migrated from Africa, are 50 percent more genetically diverse than those with European - American heritage."
With her Shannon's S.H.A.R.E. foundation, Brown is raising awareness about the disease and providing financial assistance to families:
"The last thing that you think about sometimes when you have a sick child is keeping up with the bills."
Brown also hopes to keep her daughter's legacy alive:
"We just wanted to do something that honored her strength, the strength she showed while she was going through her illness," Brown said. "Even when she was in the hospital, she thought about the other children a lot, and she wanted to make sure that they were okay."
Suprisingly, joining the bone marrow registry is very easy. Participants need only swab their mouths in four places in order to join. Still, a misconception exists that being a donor is in some way uncomfortable:
"A lot of people think it's painful, you have to give blood or that there's some kind of marrow test," said Brown.
To become a bone marrow donor yourself, register at Bethematch.org and they will send you a kit to swab the inside of your cheeks. Will you?
Watch Tavarez when she was alive here:
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