5,000 People Stand In Rain For Hours To See If They're Stem Cells Matches For A 5-Year-Old Battling Cancer

May 03, 2019

A little boy's struggle to survive inspired over 5000 people to come out and see if they could donate stem cells to help him out.

Oscar Saxelby-Lee is a five-year-old little boy, facing the battle of a lifetime. Back in December, he was diagnosed with a very rare cancer: T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Unfortunately, not only is it rare, it's also aggressive.

It causes the bone marrow to start releasing immature white blood cells, which compromises the body's immune system. The best treatment around is a stem cell transplant, which must be done within three months time.

Oscar's diagnosis shocked everyone in his class. It developed so fast that his teachers couldn't believe it. His story inspired them to try to find a donor to save this boy's life. 

His school, in Worcester, England, organized the donor event. The teachers and administrative staff were going to do everything they could to find that one precious donor to help Oscar win his fight.

In February, they set up a crowdfunding page and asked anyone between 17 and 55 years of age to register as a donor. They raised over $11,000, which was far more than they hoped.

The donor event drew 200 volunteers to help. On the first day, over 1800 people came to register as donors. The next day, over 3000 people lined up. This set a record for the most people volunteering to become stem cell donors.

It was pouring down rain, but no one made a fuss as they lined up around the block. The generosity of everyone was breathtaking. Even after the event, another thousand people registered online to become donors.

It will take six weeks to see if any of the donors are a good match for Oscar. There are 17000 HLA characteristics that have to be a good match for someone to become a donor. This makes it very difficult to find a suitable match.

Oscar continues his fight at Birmingham Children's Hospital. He has had numerous blood transfusions and is undergoing chemotherapy to fight the cancer. This energetic five-year-old boy deserves to have all the fun and love that everyone enjoys in life. Hopefully, a donor will be found, and he can get back to just being a kid.

Let us know what you think about the generous people who came out to donate stem cells. What do you think of Oscar's fight? Let others see this for themselves by passing the clip along to others.