Tuesday 23 August 2005

Saving Swing

As G Money so rightfully pointed out in his email, the donor could be sat in your inbox so please forward this appeal.
Saving DJ Swing, CHANNEL 4 ON TUESDAY 23rd AUGUST, 11:05pm - 12:10am.
Mobo award winning DJ Swing, was playing clubs all over the world, when a minor backache turned out to be a rare blood cancer, Multiple Myeloma. The only thing that's going to save him is a Bone Marrow transplant. But being African Caribbean the chance of finding a matching donor is one in 100,000. If Swing were white the odds would be one in five. In June 2004 Swing was told he had 8 weeks to find a donor. This film follows his boyhood friends and original DJ crew, the Boogie Bunch as they launch a campaign to find him that match. The campaign takes them back to their roots in clubland, as they spend the summer, culminating at the Notting Hill carnival, trying to mobilise the black community and so save their friend's life. And it's not just their community's apathy they have to deal with, Swing himself has been reluctant to go public with his disease. He is beginning to realise he now has no choice. In trying to Save DJ Swing, the Boogie Bunch may also save 38 year old Donna Benjamin. She too is suffering from Multiple Myeloma. Donna's oldest friend and sister-in-law is white. For the first time in their lives colour has become an issue - it's impossible for her to be Donna's match. So she's doing the only thing she can; with the help of Donna's 14 year old daughter, she is launching her own search for a donor. They are focussing on the one place where's there's a concentration of African Caribbean's in Luton - the black churches. But they are notoriously deaf to such appeals for help. Will the Black community listen to their desperate pleas and yield a perfect
match for Swing and Donna? Donna gets called to her hospital in London; she's been told they may have a donor for her. But it turns out not to be a perfect match. The risks of having a transplant with anything less than a perfect match are incredibly high. Doctors advise Donna to buy a bit of time by having a transplant using her own stem cells - she could get between 18 months and five year remission from this.

Swing's already had a stem cell transplant. It bought him 6 months before he relapsed. It was then that doctors said he had to have a donor transplant in 8 weeks. Swing too hears there's a potential donor, but it's not a perfect match. The doctors don't want to risk the transplant unless they absolutely have to. Will Swing become so sick that he has no choice but to proceed with the very risky transplant from a less than perfect match or will the Boogie Bunch succeed and find their oldest friend a life-saving donor? http:www.aclt.org

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