A woman who initially thought her constant itchiness was due to her active lifestyle received a devastating diagnosis after visiting the doctor. Asia Sharif started noticing unusual symptoms in November 2021 which began with an itchy sensation all over her body and then progressed to bruising. Upon seeking medical advice tests revealed that she had Hodgkin lymphoma – a type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system, which is made up of vessels and glands spread throughout the body. She was first diagnosed last year and by April 2024 she was told she was in remission. However, just two months later, her condition relapsed.
“Before I got sick I was just a normal person,” she explained. “I just enjoyed going to the gym, doing pilates, walking in nature. Every weekend I would go to the mountains with my foster brother. I was itching like a crazy person 24/7. I had bruises like all over my body – black bruises, purple bruises, pink bruises,” reports the Mirror.
Asia Sharif, a 27-year-old award-winning software engineer who self-taught coding during the Covid-19 pandemic, is currently undergoing chemotherapy at The Christie in Manchester. She is urgently searching for a stem cell donor as a transplant may be her best hope for survival. Ms Sharif, who was raised in Liverpool and now resides in Manchester, is of mixed heritage, being half-Somalian and half-Moroccan. This diversity in her background presents additional challenges in finding a compatible match for a stem cell transplant.
In response to this, she has teamed up with the Anthony Nolan charity to initiate the Register for Asia campaign, which aims to motivate healthy individuals aged 16 to 30 from various ethnicities to join the stem cell register. “It can be harder for people like me, who are from minority ethnic backgrounds, to find a match. That’s why I’m sharing my story and hoping to inspire people to register,” Ms Sharif explained. “If you’re matched with someone in need your stem cells could literally save their life. There are lots of good people in the world who genuinely want to make a difference and I think this is one way to really do that. It’s a blessing to save a life.”
Yasmin Sheikh, who leads policy and public affairs at Anthony Nolan, said: “For patients from mixed and minority ethnic backgrounds like Asia finding a match can be more difficult because they are more likely to have rare tissue types. That’s why it’s vital that more young people from minority ethnic backgrounds sign up to the Anthony Nolan stem cell register because every single person that signs up could give a patient like Asia a second chance at life. As a charity we’re also working hard on other actions that could help more patients access life-saving treatment such as partnering with international registers and accelerating research into new treatments.”
For more details on how to join the Anthony Nolan stem cell register, visit: https://www.anthonynolan.org/registerforasia.