San Diego's South Asian community will hold a bone marrow donor drive Saturday afternoon at the Shri Mandir Temple on Black Mountain Road. It's part of a nationwide effort to find a match for a dying man, and to increase the number of South Asians in the national donor registry. KPBS reporter Kenny Goldberg has more.
The impetus for the drive is to find a bone marrow match for a South Asian physician in Boston who has leukemia.
But there's a broader issue: the average South Asian who needs a bone marrow transplant has only about a one in 20,000 chance of finding a matching donor.
Somdeb Majumdar is helping to organize the local drive. He says there have already been more than 100 drives nationwide to try to help the man in Boston.
Majumdar : I mean even if he doesn't get a match, and God forbid he's not successful in pulling this off, what this has achieved is a significant strengthening of the registry.
Majumdar says the drive has added more than 7,000 South Asians to the bone marrow donor database.
Kenny Goldberg, KPBS News.
