Tears of joy as young donor meets girl she donated bone marrow to for the first time

“Hello? Ms Zubaidah, we are calling because you are a 100 per cent match for a girl who is in need of bone marrow.”

At first, 22-year-old Nur Siti Zubaidah thought the call from the unknown number in 2020 was a scam. But then she recalled signing up to join the Bone Marrow Donor Programme (BMDP) registry the year before.

About three months later, she was in a hospital room giving her marrow to be used by a recipient, who she knew only to be a little girl.

That was all Ms Zubaidah, now 26, knew until Sept 21, when she came face to face with 12-year-old Ria Nadira at a gathering organised by BMDP.

“Thank you for saving my life,” she told Ms Zubaidah, when they were both called up onstage to meet for the first time. 

Ms Zubaidah burst into tears as they hugged. 

She found out that, thanks to her donation, Ria no longer suffers from thalassemia major  – the most serious of a group of inherited blood disorders – affecting the body’s ability to produce haemoglobin, which can lead to stunted growth and bone deformities.

The disorder caused Ria’s skin to turn pale and yellow, and drained her energy, among other things. Without a bone marrow transplant, she would have needed to receive blood transfusions for the rest of her life.

The life-changing donation started with a chance encounter. Ms Zubaidah, who was then studying communication design at Temasek Polytechnic, had walked past a BMDP roadshow at Kallang Wave Mall with some friends in 2019 and signed up to join the registry after hearing she could save another person’s life with her donation.

Initially, her parents were hesitant about the donation, because they thought the procedure would need open surgery, and were worried about the pain and side effects she would have to endure. It took several meetings over a few weeks with BMDP representatives before they fully understood that she could donate her marrow through peripheral blood stem cell donation, a process similar to blood donation, before they gave Ms Zubaidah their support.

Following a health check-up to ensure she was still eligible to be a donor, Ms Zubaidah took iron supplements for two weeks and self-administered four daily injections of a hormone to increase the number of blood stem cells in her bloodstream. 

On the day of her procedure, she checked in to Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital at 6am. She was hooked up to an apheresis machine – which draws blood from the donor’s right hand and isolates the blood stem cells for donation before returning the remaining blood to the donor through her or his left hand – for 12 hours.

She had to stay awake for the whole duration, or her blood flow would have slowed down too much. When she had to use the toilet, she used a bedpan instead.

“I was kind of in a daze, but the food was good!” she recounted, referring to the lunch provided by the hospital on the day of her donation. Other than light bruising on her arms, Ms Zubaidah did not experience other after-effects. 

She thought no more about the donation until a BMDP staff called her in 2024 to ask if she would like to meet the person she saved. 

Ria was only three years old when a routine health check-up revealed an enlarged spleen. Follow-up checks eventually revealed she had thalassemia.

Ria’s father, Mr Muhamad Rizal Monin, 40, a safety, security and compliance head, said that his daughter started receiving blood transfusions when she was four years old to regulate the haemoglobin levels in her blood. She needed more transfusions as she grew older, which took a toll on the family financially.

Mr Rizal said he was grateful Ria was able to find a match. Seeing older kids at the transfusion centre, Ria’s parents did not want that for her for the rest of her life.  

“No parents want their children to go through that, so we are just grateful,” Mr Rizal said.

Ms Zubaidah, now a student care teacher, described her meeting with Ria as a “miracle”. 

“Seeing her looking full of life and healthy was a beautiful and emotional moment for me,” she said. 

In his opening speech at the Bone Marrow Donor-Recipient Meet, BMDP president Abhijit Raha said bone marrow compatibility depends on many factors – the biggest being race. Only 8 per cent of the BMPD registry are Malays. Finding a donor-recipient match locally is a one in 20,000 chance for most Singaporeans, but since Ria is of Malay and Chinese descent, it was even harder for her to find a match in Singapore, much less a perfect one.

Apart from Ms Zubaidah and Ria, two other donor-recipient pairs met for the first time at the Bone Marrow Donor-Recipient Meet on Sept 21. BMDP often hosts meets similar to this one in order to raise awareness about marrow donation.

After a successful donation, donors are allowed to donate again to only the patient they initially donated their stem cells to for two years. This is before they are released back into the registry to be able to donate to other patients. 

Having completed her donation to Ria, Ms Zubaidah is ready to donate again. Only about 7 per cent of BMDP’s donors donate a second time to the same or a different patient, but Ms Zubaidah said:  “If there’s another possible match, I want to be able to continue (to help).”

Becoming a bone marrow donor

In 2023, BMDP facilitated 95 marrow donations.

To sign up to be a donor with the BMDP, you must be at least 18, ideally weigh above 45kg, have a body mass index not exceeding 35 for a bone marrow donation and 40 for a peripheral blood stem cell donation. You should also be in generally good health.

The chief executive officer of BMDP, Mr Charles Loh, said that in the programme’s recent national survey of more than 3,000 respondents, 54 per cent of Singaporeans said they were unwilling to donate their bone marrow to a stranger due to three main reasons: misconceptions about the donation process, lack of knowledge about the process, and lack of support from loved ones.

Many people still believe wrongly that the donation process requires surgery, he said. However, it is similar to blood donation, with common after-effects being aches or pain as well as light bruising at the injection site, headaches, and slight discomfort.

Over the years, the programme has seen a slight increase in sign-ups. From 2022 to 2023, BMDP gained 4,591 more marrow donors.

In 2023, BMPD reported that only 7.97 per cent and 8.89 per cent of its 122,449 marrow donors were in the Malay and Indian racial groups. Since donor-recipient compatibility is largely based on race, BMPD needs more minority donors. As of 2023, just under 26 per cent of Singapore’s population belongs to the Malay, Indian and other ethnic groups.

To learn more about becoming a donor, visit

bmdp.org