A New Zealand entertainer is urging more Pasifika and Māori to donate blood and bone marrow to help spare other whānau the pain they've endured.
Pio Terei's 17-year-old son Teina died in 2016 following a leukemia diagnosis. A bone marrow transplant helps fight the cancer, but there must be a match between donors and recipients.
The Terei family has established Trust Teina with a vision to save Māori and Pasifika lives through increasing the bone marrow and organ donor registers in New Zealand.
Terei says the number of Māori and Pasifika people in the donor register is far fewer than the number of Pākehā.
"For Māori and Pasifika, if you need a bone marrow [transplant], the library or register that you go to is between 6000 and 8000. If you don't have the Māori gene or the Pasifika gene, it's 20 million," he told The Hui on Monday.
"If you've got that Pacific gene, and it doesn't matter how much it is, even if your great-great-great-grandmother was Māori or Pasifika, then you fall into that category.
"A Samoan can help a Māori, and a Tongan can help a Cook Islander, a Hawaiian," Terei adds.
But the main point is getting people into the database so they have the chance of helping someone. Initially, there's just a quick swab to find out if someone is the right match.
"I think a lot of people have thought, even myself, that somebody's going to get a drill and drill me somewhere where I don't want to be drilled and get the bone marrow," Terei says.
"But no, there's a process where you can actually extract the bone marrow from blood. There are other processes as well, but that's how they do it."
People can join the bone marrow registry, provided they meet eligibility criteria, by giving a blood donation at a New Zealand Blood Service donor centre or mobile blood drive. While there, they can ask about joining the bone marrow registry when signing up for a blood donation.
"You may never get called up, you may never, ever be a match," Terei says. "If your situation changes, you don't have to do it. But [by signing up] you've done it, you've given the ultimate koha."
