The Miraculous Story of Amit Gupta’s Bone Marrow Match

For someone of South Asian descent, the odds of finding a matching bone marrow donor are currently only 1 in 20,000.

By Jorge Rivas Jan 19, 2012

As Amit Gupta learned after being diagnosed with acute leukemia in September, finding a suitable bone-marrow donor is extremely difficult but finding one who is South Asian like Gupta, who is originally from India is close to impossible because there aren’t many South Asian donors in the bone-marrow database.

"South Asians are severely under-represented in the bone marrow pool, and I need help," Gupta wrote on AmitGuptaNeedsYou.com, a website he started to help find a bone marrow match. For someone of South Asian descent, the odds of finding a matching bone marrow donor are currently only 1 in 20,000.

On Wednesday, Gupta announced that a donor who matched his profile had been found.

"After over 100 drives organized by friends, family, and strangers, celebrity call-outs, a bazillion reblogs (7000+!), tweets, and Facebook posts, press, fundraising and international drives organized by tireless friends, and a couple painful false starts, I’ve got a 10/10 matched donor! You all literally helped save my life. (And the lives of many others.)"

Gupta started his treatment today. Today’s love goes to him.

Send him lots of love, strength and courage so his spirits remain high. And show him some love by visiting marrow.org and register to be a donor–you’ll get a kit in the mail, you’ll rub a cotton swab on your cheek and mail it back. That’s it.


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