Zara Al Shaikh, a 13-year-old girl with British and Qatari parents, has seen her online plea for help go viral. The teenage girl suffers from leukemia, and due to having a mixed ethnicity, it's hard for her to match with any bone marrow donor.
Her situation seemed pretty bleak before she and her father, Dr. Loua Al Shaikh, turned to social media to help get people's attention. They started a Twitter account, Match4Zara, and tweeted a plea for help, which now has over 13,000 retweets and 2,000 likes.
Shortly afterwards, the hashtag #Match4Zara went viral, with people from all over the world asking how they can take part in helping Zara and others in need of a bone marrow transplant.
The Al Shaikh family set up a website to answer these questions and give people more information on the issue.
According to ABC News, one bone marrow registry told Dr. Al Shaikh that the number of people who signed up in a single day increased by a factor of 12 after the tweet.
Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar has extended its operating hours from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. until February 25th to help find a match for Zara.
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In response to the outpouring of community support in finding a blood stem cell donor match for Zara Al Shaikh, HMC’s...
Posted by Hamad Medical Corporation on Sunday, February 21, 2016
Read more about Zara's condition on Match4Zara.com, and get tested to see if you could help save this teenager's life.