On May 10 in Cologne, Germany, World Cancer Day will be held, event organized by the DKMS Foundation -a non-profit entity dedicated to stem cell transplantation for cancer patients- and which will bring together expert representatives in this field from all over the world.
From Chile the only exhibitor who will participate in the meeting will be María Ignacia Patillo, journalist and executive director of the DKMS Chile Foundation, a firm that was created in 2018 in the country. There, she will talk about the progress of the organization in the region.
Patillo’s history with DKMS dates back to 2015, when his 2-year-old son Eduardo was diagnosed with a brain tumor. The chemotherapy treatment ended up producing severe bone marrow aplasia, so he stopped producing blood stem cells. “My son needed an urgent transplant. This takes months, but he didn’t have two weeks. And the transplant was achieved thanks to DKMS who did everything possible”Patillo reflects.
Months after the surgery, his son passed away, but the impression DKMS made on Patillo lived on. For this reason, when DKMS arrived in Chile in 2018, the journalist did not hesitate and she began to work for the foundation. And in just four years, the NGO has managed to create the first registry of potential stem cell donors in Chilewhich already has 120,000 members and has allowed 130 successful transplants.
“Before DKMS began operating in Chile, the chances of a Chilean finding an unrelated donor were 30%, today we reach 50%”Patillo says.
The exhibition is intended as an instance to commemorate the 30 years of the foundation, as well as having reached 100,000 stem cell donations worldwide, which corresponds to 40% of all transplants with unrelated donors.
“This conference will talk about our history, the projects that have materialized and how we support patients in the different countries where we are. In our case there will not be a Chilean patient, but we will talk about what has happened in the country, about how 50% of our donations have been for nationals,” Patillo mentions.
These meetings between donors and patients are key for the foundation. When a period of two years has elapsed after the operation, both parties involved are asked if they wish to meet. In many cases the answer is positive. For the NGO, donors and patients are “blood brothers”, a slogan they use to raise awareness and invite more people to donate.
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