BENGALURU: Thirty-four-year-old Bengalurean, Mohammed Sharief, who was paralysed in his left shoulder after an accident, left a corporate job to run an autorickshaw to ferry stem cell donors and do documentation and data entry works to help a Chennai-based NGO, DATRI (‘Datri’ means ‘donor’ in Sanskrit).
The NGO is one of India’s largest blood stem cell donors registry with operations all over India. It has 3,70,000 registered volunteer donors helping patients suffering from fatal blood disorders like leukaemia or thalassaemia get a bone marrow match. “I have been working for DATRI for one-and-a-half years. I left my corporate job four years ago. For the first six months, I did a part time job for them. Now, I don’t take any other passengers.
I work as a transport vendor and as an office person. An accident left my left shoulder paralysed and my employer didn’t pay me a single penny as compensation,” Mohammed said.
He was unable to sustain his family as he lost his ability to type fast. “I used to do data entry but due to the collapse of my shoulder, I couldn’t do it anymore. My father and other relatives are auto drivers, so I took to it. I wanted to help donors with the blood donations as this is a noble cause for bone marrow transplant,” he said.
He said that donors arrive from all across the country, sometimes at night, and he transports them to hospitals. “They are not locals, so they won’t know the routes. I also help them with the documents. Whether it is getting printouts or sending couriers to aid in finding a bone marrow match, I do it,” he said.
Despite the volunteer work, Sharief provides for his mother, wife and daughter single-handedly. As of today, there are 1,981 patients registered with DATRI who are waiting to find a match that could save their life and out of these there are 404 patients from Karnataka alone.
There are children suffering from thalassemia in a few pockets in rural Karnataka, including Bijapur, Upinnagadi, Mangalore, Gadag, Mysuru, Ballary and Tumakuru. There are as many as 15 to 20 reported cases of children with thalassemia who do not have a matched donor in their family.Most of these children belong to lower strata of society and their parents are unable to afford a monthly blood transfusion to save their lives.