Yes you read that correctly Nigeria! Olympic hopeful Seun Adebiyi who is a native Nigerian was diagnosed with Leukemia just one month after receiving his law degree from Yale University. Doctors told him he needed a bone marrow or stem cell transplant to survive. Unfortunately he had no matching donor in his family or on the registry and his best chances of finding a match was from a fellow Nigerian. So Seun did what was unthinkable at the time. He held the first bone marrow drive ever in Nigeria. He has since received his transplant, resumed his Olympic training, and registered thousands of donors to the registry here in the US before starting his own.
The new
Bone Marrow Registry in Nigeria (BMRN) launched February 24th, 2012 is only the second bone marrow registry in Africa and will give hope to so many people of African descent worldwide who need a life saving transplant. Seun sits on the board of directors for Preserve Our Legacy, INC as a legal adviser. Congratulations Seun, we are glad you are on our team!
Seun Adebiyi at a photo shoot promoting the POL "Got Bone Marrow?" fundraiser T-shirts
photo by Brett Melius
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