An 8-year-olds search for bone marrow match in battle with leukemia comes to North Texas – The Dallas Morning News

Jakobe Kobe Washington is eight years old, loves baseball and is fighting an aggressive form of leukemia.

The Florida boy, who is known to pray for other kids in the hospital, needs life-saving blood stem cells or a bone marrow transplant. So far, his family has been unable to find a match.

On Saturday, Be The Match and the Icla da Silva Foundation will host a drive-through swab event at Irving Mall to try to find a match for Kobe, who has extended family in North Texas.

Its tough to see your kid fighting a fight, and you cant do anything but be there to support him, no control in it at all, Kobes father Jordan Washington, who is from Dallas, told the ABC affiliate in Tampa Bay, Fla.

Every year, more than 12,000 patients turn to Be The Match, a national marrow donation program, to search for blood stem cells or a bone marrow donor to help cure them of blood cancers, such as leukemia and lymphoma, according to a release about the event.

Roughly half of those patients are unable to find a match, with only 23% of Black patients like Kobe finding a match, compared to 77% of white patients, according to the Icla da Silva Foundation, which serves as a recruitment center for Be The Match and focuses on minority populations.

Thats because race and ethnicity play a key role in stem cells and marrow, and of the 22 million potential donors on the registry, only 4% are Black.

Potential donors ages 18 to 44 are encourages to go to the Irving Mall, 3880 Irving Mall, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Saturday.

Participants will then register from their phones and take a swab of their inner cheek.

Those unable to attend can text 4Kobe to 61474 to complete the online registration and have a cheek swab kit sent to their home.

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An 8-year-olds search for bone marrow match in battle with leukemia comes to North Texas - The Dallas Morning News