Wife in transplant plea for cancer-hit guitarist

The fight is not over!
Let everyone around you know about the bone marrow registration, including... your Maid!
Well, yes, Philippinos have Leukemia too, but not enough registered donors, so let your maid know, and it may help to save Mr. Perez.

The following article was published in "The Standard"

Wife in transplant plea for cancer-hit guitarist
Mary Ann Benitez 
Friday, October 19, 2012

A Filipino musician desperately needs a bone marrow donor after a third relapse of late-stage cancer, with his British wife urging the Filipino community to help save him.
Rocky Perez, a bass guitarist who has lived in Hong Kong for 10 years, is receiving chemotherapy at Queen Mary Hospital for Stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma that was diagnosed in June last year.
Perez and his wife, Debra Jones, were told a bone marrow transplant is essential for his survival, but there is no match in the Hong Kong Bone Marrow Donor Registry and other such registries worldwide.
Jones, head music teacher at South Island School, said last night: "He's feeling very sick at the moment because the chemotherapy they are using on him is very strong. It has to be as it is his third relapse. Right now, he's feeling grim."
She added: "The only way to stop these relapses is to get the bone marrow transplant.
"But we've searched all the international registries and there is absolutely nobody out there who is a match for him."
There is no such registry in the Philippines and even in countries such as the United States with a large Filipino population just a small percentage of them are on the registry.
"We've drawn a blank there as well," said Jones, adding her husband only has half-siblings and are not a good match.
Jones, a Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama graduate who used to work in London as a music teacher, and Perez, 35, met in Hong Kong and married eight years ago.
They have three boys together, aged seven, five and two.
For the past decade, Perez has worked full-time at Spicy Fingers in Wan Chai and Sticky Fingers in Tsim Sha Tsui.
Jones and volunteers will be distributing flyers on Sunday as part of their donor campaign.
It is hoped the campaign will add at least 5,000 Filipinos to the registry "in the hope of finding a match for Rocky but those names will remain on file and stand to benefit other Filipinos with similar diseases worldwide."