Adopted from Ethiopia, his African siblings travel to Boston to save his life

By Irene Sege One morning in 2006, Aidan Barry showed his wife, Midori Kobayashi, a newspaper story on the plight of the lost boys of Sudan and children affected by the diamond war in Sierra Leone. Little did the Stratham, N.H., couple know that this moment at their breakfast table would lead them to adopt a 6-year-old boy from Ethiopia whose desperately poor parents could not support all their children. Neither could they predict that, seven years later, their adopted son would develop a life-threatening blood disorder connecting his adopted family and birth family for a stem cell transplant to offer him the best chance of cure. Behaylu Barry has severe aplastic anemia, a bone marrow failure syndrome that prevents his marrow from producing the red blood cells that carry oxygen, the white blood cells that fight infection and the platelets that promote clotting.  He was diagnosed in February after suddenly suffering nosebleeds and extreme fatigue, never making it to the first practice of the competitive soccer team that had just selected him. Had Behaylu developed the condition in his Ethiopian village, odds are he would not have survived— either because he would have succumbed to infection or bleeding before being diagnosed or because treatment was unavailable. Instead, in April, two of his five African siblings left their village for the first time, boarded their first airplane, and traveled to New England, where one would donate bone marrow and both would excitedly take ...
Source: Thrive, Children's Hospital Boston - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: All posts Aplastic anemia Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center our patients' stories Stem cell Stem Cell Transplant Program Source Type: news