Coronavirus: ‘We need bone marrow donors to save my baby girl’s life from leukaemia’, Hong Kong mother of two-year-old pleads amid London lockdown
- Race against time is a nightmare for grief-stricken parents as city comes under siege from pandemic, and access to donor registrations gets delayed
- Family is appealing to Hong Kong public to register with the Hong Kong Bone Marrow Donor Registry
Two-year-old Livia, the child of a Hong Kong mother and German father, is among patients in a London hospital as Britain grapples with a lockdown wrought by the coronavirus. But she is fighting a disease much rarer and even deadlier.
Livia was diagnosed in early March with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). Because of the coronavirus pandemic, visits to her bedside have been restricted to reduce infection risks.
Only her father can stay with her. Her aunt and grandparents in Hong Kong cannot travel there for fear of exposing the child to more health risks.
Mother Olive Yu, who has been trying every means possible to save her daughter – with access to donor registrations delayed during the lockdown – told the Post in a phone interview: “I still think that I'm in a really bad dream. I still find it very hard to accept that this is happening. Livia is everything to us because she’s the only grandchild in the family, and our only child.”
We need to be thinking about how we can help give her [as much time] as she can get
The family has called on those aged between 18 and 60 in Hong Kong to register as a bone marrow donor with the Hong Kong Bone Marrow Donor Registry, led by the Hong Kong Red Cross. The information is shared with the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA), a global database of volunteer donors.
