February 19, 2011

We are organising a Bone marrow drive for Uma and SALVATION ARMY Food Drive. We will be informing you the venue and Date soon.

SALVATION ARMY Food Drive
GAMA is organising a SALVATION ARMY Food Drive. We will collect the food and deliver to Salvation Army. Venue and Date will be announced soon.

Bone marrow drive by GAMA

We are organizing a Bone marrow drive for this wonderful girl. Please see the attached Information for more details if you were not aware of this earlier (Please read till the end). Please pass on this message to all your friends and make this drive a big success. Please try our level best to help this girl.

Uma, six year old daughter of Dr. Pramod Kaila & Dr. Indira Menon, is a normal six year old doing things like running, jumping, coloring etc. She has been recently diagnosed with Bone Marrow failure aka Aplastic Anemia. This makes her bruise easily and causes all her blood counts to be low, which in turn makes her more prone to infections and anemia. Although the current treatment plan is immunosuppressive therapy, the only curative treatment is a Bone Marrow transplant. National Marrow Registry is Eurocentric (over 60% Caucasian), hence We need to come forward and register thereby increasing the likelihood of a good match for our lil' Uma. How can you help UMA (Please visit the website for more details: www.Helpuma.com)
There are many ways:
1. Become a registered bone marrow donor. More info at below link
http://www.marrow.org/JOIN/Join_in_Person/index.html
2. Email your friends and all contacts.
3. Participate and organize donor drives.
We would be extremely grateful if you could do one or all of the above to help our beloved Uma.
How to Get Involved:
1) Contact a local recruiter by going to www.bethematch.org or calling 1- 800-marrow2
2) If you are eligible, join the National Marrow Registry by giving promo code : SAVEUMA
(National Marrow Registry)
3) Consider helping in a larger way by hosting a bone marrow drive in your area, at your job, place of worship, school, etc.
It's a very safe screening procedure. You'll be contacted only if necessary. Please read the screening procedure below and follow the link for more details of UMA
Process of Bone Marrow Donation:
The Process of bone marrow donation is very simple, non-invasive and totally harmless to the donor. The process essentially involves the following simple steps:

Step 1:
Undergo a mouth swab; NO NEEDLES OR BLOOD.
Step 2:
If matched, provide blood sample for further testing to confirm a precise match.
Step 3: Final donation process itself is a simple blood donation.
Please visit the website for more details: www.Helpuma.com

Please contact the following GAMA members if you need assistance

Biju Thuruthumalil Ph:678- 938- 0692 email : bijurj@netzero.net

Linda Tharakan Ph:770-605-2957 email : lindatharakan@yahoo.com

Anu Sukumar Ph: 404-374-3669 email : asukumar@aol.com

Thomas Eapen Ph : 678-735-2718 email : thomaseapenk@gmail.com

Zacharias Vachaparambil Ph: 678-697-1423 email : zach.vacha@gmail.com

Sincerely,

On behalf of the 2011 GAMA EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Biju Thomas Thuruthumalil, President

Anu Sukumar, Secertary