Tony Ferreira (40), who suffers from Sezary Syndrome, first made an appeal to Islanders to come forward and get tested to see if they were compatible. However, despite 220 registering, no match was found.
Now, Mr Ferreira’s wife Osvalda – who has been forced to quit her job in a nursing home to avoid infecting her husband – has taken the couple’s search to the UK.
Mrs Ferreira said: ‘Tony’s condition is bad enough, but for thousands of patients living with cancer in the UK, Covid-19 has delayed many treatments. We are not sure yet when we can begin travelling to London for treatment or what the new normal will look like.
‘But we pray that a stranger will help us to continue our lives together for many years to come.
‘I long to hold Tony’s hands again, without his protective gloves on. Tony has been wearing his blue plastic gloves so long now that I’ve almost forgotten how his hands feel without them. He has such strong hands and holding them would reassure me that everything is going to be all right.’
Mr Ferreira, originally from Madeira, was diagnosed in 2017 but first noticed symptoms in 2012, when he suffered a small rash on his lower back. The rash developed and his hands and feet would split open.
The disease causes white blood cells to become cancerous and aggressively attack the skin.
About 90% of Mr Ferreira’s body is now affected by the rare cancer, and his best chance of survival is blood stem cell donation.
In March, doctors had planned to treat him with a new chemotherapy drug being tested but the trial was delayed due to the Covid-19 outbreak. The father-of-one’s Portuguese heritage is also making it more difficult to find a donor.
DKMS UK, a London-based blood cancer charity, is now helping the couple try to find a way forward.
However, Jonathan Pearce, the charity’s chief executive, said the organisation was now facing a number of challenges, including a 50% drop in people coming forward to register as donors.
‘While many stem cell transplants are still going ahead, the logistics around supporting blood stem cell donors to travel to hospital, and then arranging the transport of the stem cells to the transplant centre, have become much more challenging and complex,’ he said.
‘There are also transplants that have been delayed, but once the pandemic is over we know there will be a backlog of patients in urgent need of an unrelated blood stem cell donor.
‘Sadly though, in some of those cases there’s a risk that the disease could progress further, and a transplant may no longer be possible once this is all over.’
People can register for a swab kit at dkms.org.uk .
