THERE is a strong bond between two young men, even though they are a few thousand kilometers away from each other. A young man from Shenzhen donated bone borrow that has saved a leukemia patient’s life, Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported.

Wu Yaoliang is a staff member working at Kuichong Subdistrict Office in Dapeng New Area. He recently received a thank-you letter from a person he had never met, the recipient of his bone marrow.

The patient, who is now recovering after the transplant, told Wu in the letter that he was born in 1990 in Hunan Province and had been a tour guide in Guilin, the famous tourism city in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region before being diagnosed with leukemia.

After undergoing six rounds of chemotherapy at a hospital in Beijing, the patient said he had used up all of his family’s savings as well as donations they had raised from the Internet. The young man was about to lose hope when exciting news found him.

The China Marrow Donor Program informed the young patient in February that they had found three matching bone marrow donors. However, that was just the result of an initial test. It later turned out that only one of the donors was qualified to donate to the patient and Wu was the one.

Wu received a call from Beijing at almost the same time and was told that his bone marrow could save the patient’s life. Wu felt excited that he could save the man’s life with his bone marrow, but his parents were of a different mind.

His parents thought that donating bone marrow would require the donor to undergo a painful spinal surgery using long needles without anesthesia, and worried that the surgery would harm their son.

To make his parents less worried about the donation, Wu did a lot of research on the Internet and told his parents that new technology has made marrow donation much easier and less painful. The family then decided to support Wu’s decision.

In July, Wu successful donated his bone marrow at Shenzhen No. 2 People’s Hospital, making him the 228th bone marrow volunteer in Shenzhen.

Wu is 33 years old and is a native resident in Kuichong. He has donated blood for 13 consecutive years.  

(Zhang Qian)