S.Vigneshwaran is my junior from Anna University, Chennai, India. He is suffering from Acute Myeloid Leukemia. He has to have a Bone Marrow Transplant or a Cord blood Transplant in order to recover from the disease. Unfortunately for him we were not able to find a blood-relative matching donor in India. Hospitals in India do not perform a Bone Marrow Transplant from a non related person. Even so we could not find a good match from any one in India. The alternate treatment option that Doctors have suggested is Cord Blood Transplant. 

    India does not have the concept of medical insurance as widely followed as it is here in the US. Public health care is good for the most part except for high end operations like this. These are performed only in a selected few hospitals and people have to pay for it. A lot of people who came to know of Vigneshwaran's condition have contributed to the amount that we have collected so far. I would like to thank them for their generous contribution. Unfortunately the amount that we have collected so far is no where close to the final amount required for performing the operation abroad.

   I have below a letter from Vigneshwaran's brother requesting for help. One can only imagine the amount of suffering he and his family members are going through at this stage. I kindly request you to contact me (sudhagar_t at hotmail dot com) if you are willing to help Vigneshwaran in any way. Either by way of monetary donations or by way of medical help, we are very grateful to you for any help that you can offer. Please do help spread the word by posting this in other blogs if you can.

 I Raja Rajajeswaran who is working for iSOFT R&D in India, my brother S Vigneshwaran (just 20 year old) doing his BTech Information Technology from College of Engineering – Anna University, guindy- Chennai  is battling against acute myeloid leukemia. He has been hospitalized for a painful transplanting treatment. This treatment is a condition whereby a bone marrow from a donor, which is almost similar to the composition of that present in the affected person's body is injected and is allowed to regenerate. But the problem is that it's always very difficult to get a matching bone marrow. The closest possibilities are siblings, if any, and the parents. We  had our respective bone marrows tested and it turned out to be unfit for transplantation as HLA didn't match. We have also sent applications to various bone marrow banks and waiting for a matching bone marrow. But unfortunately, none of the hospitals in India are allowed to receive the Bone Marrows from outside and they don’t have such facilities to perform unrelated Bone Marrow Transplantation. So the treatment had to be stopped for want of a matching unrelated bone marrow.

At this juncture the doctors have suggested an alternative treatment called 'Cord blood transplant' or ‘unrelated matched bone marrow transplant’. Unfortunately this treatment is not available in Indian hospitals whereas hospitals in the USA, the UK, Singapore and Australia have been performing them. Among all the locations Singapore is the most economical. Yet, the expenditure is estimated around Rs. 67 lac (approx $150,000) excluding Procurement of Unrelated Donor Stem cells that will cost around $30,000.

  My family has been doing every bit to generate as much funds possible through personal means, it is still below the requirement stated above. We have around $85,0000. We have sold out all our properties and many of IT friends helped us to generate this huge amount, but still we are half the way in the amount stated above. I humbly request you to consider my plight. My brother is a outstanding student doing his BTECH from one of the TOP universities in INDIA (College of Engineering – Anna University, guindy in Chennai is ranked 5^th best among the top engineering colleges in India).

Regards,

Rajarajeswaran Shanmugam