The family of Helen Huynh who is battling leukemia, voice their grievance against US government for rejecting visa possibilities for a perfect stem cell match stationed in Vietnam. Helen Huynh at the age of 61 was diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia earlier this year. Fortunately, Helen’s sister who resides in Vietnam currently is a perfect HLA(Human Leukocyte Antigen) match for her. Since the doctors have said that Helen would die without a stem cell transplant, bringing her sister Thuy from Vietnam is the only option to save her life.
The entire family of Helen resides now at California. They had emigrated to the US in 1991 under the quota scheduled for former officers of the Southern Vietnamese military. Helene Huynh’s husband had fought along the American forces during the Vietnam war and thus having lived in US for over 2 decades they are all US citizens now.
Despite their strong affiliation with the nation, the family now feels that their government is now standing in their way to save their grandmother’s life. The faculty at the UC Irvine Medical Centre’s intensive care unit say stem cell transplant is the only way to beat the deadly cancer. While finding a perfect match is so remote, everyone felt that Helen was so fortunate to have a perfectly matching sister, but the visa constraint was an absolutely unexpected problem.
Despite several letters from the doctors urging the US consulate to grant an emergency medical visa, Thuy’s Visa has been rejected 4 times in a row. The only apprehension is that the visitor would continue to stay in the US for longer than expected, embracing the health reasons of her sister.
Understanding the poor state of affairs, the congressman, Alan Lowenthal said in his statement to the CBS News that he was doing everything possible to help Helen’s situation. Doctors have clearly also stated that harvesting and sending the stem cells from an adult donor is not a wise choice.
Now with stem cell transplants evolving has the future of medicine, the possibility of our family members requiring matching stem cells will also be magnified. By making a wise once in a lifetime choice at your baby’s birth, you can by default secure your family from the hunt of finding matching stem cells, during need in the future. This can be done by deciding to bank your baby’s stem cells with community stem cell banking at birth. Community Stem cell Banking offers protection of stem cells for the entire family that includes the child, child’s parents, sibling and grandparents as well. With community stem cell banking you will also get access to a huge pool of stem cells and thereby increase your probability of finding a match. To preserve your baby’s umbilical cord stem cells at birth with community stem cell banking: https://goo.gl/o3Snad
Ref:https://cbsnews.com/news/leukemia-patient-stem-cell-donor-denied-visa/
