By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
BATTERY PARK CITY — Three-year-old Rayan Sher isn’t just battling leukemia.
The young Battery Park City resident is also fighting the odds, as his parents desperately search for a bone marrow donor who could save their son's life.
"Rayan is now in URGENT need of a bone marrow transplant," parents Sarah and Farhan Sher wrote on a website they set up for their son.
Rayan is having a tough time finding a match because he is South Asian, an ethnicity that is underrepresented in the national donor bank, his parents said. Anyone from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and neighboring countries has a better chance of being a match.
The nonprofit DKMS, a bone marrow donation center, is hosting daily donor drives for Rayan all over the country and is particularly encouraging New York taxi drivers who share Rayan’s heritage to stop by the Mandell School on the Upper West Side Thursday to do a quick cheek swab test.
Anyone who is healthy and between the ages of 18 and 60 can donate bone marrow, a relatively simple process that does not require an overnight hospital stay.
Rayan’s parents wrote on Facebook that they are trying to stay strong but it is difficult to see their son in pain, unable to enjoy his usual pastimes of feeding squirrels and waving at boats on the Hudson River.
"There is nothing in this world which is more precious to us than our little prince," Rayan’s parents wrote. "It hurts more than we could ever imagine anything could hurt."
The Mandell School, 795 Columbus Ave., is swabbing potential donors Thursday from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Other upcoming drives are listed online. Those who miss the drives can go to getswabbed.org to have a kit mailed to them.
