A MONTH after his 2009 graduation from Yale Law School, Seun Adebiyi learned he had not one but two lethal
blood cancers and began an odyssey to find a bone-marrow donor. Mr. Adebiyi, 28, who came to the US from
Nigeria as a child, made appeals through Yale, on radio stations, in a YouTube video and even on a trip
to Nigeria to ask law students to volunteer.

But finally, his doctor called, saying that a Nigerian woman in the US had donated her baby’s umbilical
cord blood to a “cord-blood bank” and that the stem cells in it were a close enough match. After his
own marrow — the source of his cancers — was wiped out, those cells were infused into him at Memorial
Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He has been in remission since.

Now he is trying to repay that debt, with an effort that experts say may save the lives of both Nigerians
and black Americans. In February, he helped start Nigeria’s national bone-marrow registry, the first
in Africa outside South Africa. He is now raising money to start a cord-blood bank there.

Millions of Nigerians have blood cancers like leukemia or lymphoma, and about 4,000 black Americans
die annually of them. Less than 20 per cent of black Americans now find the perfect donor matches
that could save their lives, while more than 70 per cent of whites do. Without a registry and
cord-blood bank, no Nigerians do.


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