Girl Needs a Rare Blood Type Only Found in Indians, Pakistanis

A 2-year-old Pakistani origin girl in Florida needs your help. Little Zainab is battling a cancer and needs blood donation of a type that is extremely rare. Only 4 per cent of people in the world have this blood type and they are all of exclusively Indian, Pakistani or Iranian descent. The appeal has been raised by an organisation called One Blood that is in the midst of a worldwide hunt to find a match. The donors will have to have type O or A blood with one exception. Human blood is determined by antigens, and Zainab is missing an antigen called Indian B. So the donor’s blood should also be missing the same antigen, reports CNN.

So far, the organisation has managed to track down two donors, one in the US and one in the UK. Zainab has been receiving blood from these donors but she will need more to survive. She suffers from neuroblastoma, that developed in her nerve cells and she is currently undergoing chemotherapy. The blood will be needed to support her treatment.

There are around 200 rare blood groups in the world. A blood group is considered rare if one in a 1,000 has a certain antigen, or lacks a certain antigen. A group is deemed very rare if one person in 10,000 has an antigen or lacks a certain antigen.