Five Ohioans Being Tested For Rare Blood Type Needed For 2-Year-Old Florida Girl

By Tana Weingartner, WVXU

Several Ohioans in Cincinnati and Dayton are being screened for a possible match for a two-year-old Florida girl with cancer who needs an extremely rare type of blood. 

Blood centers across Ohio are screening potential matches to help Zainab Mughal. Her donors must be Indian, Pakistani or Iranian, and even then, less than four percent of those populations are likely to be a match. Hoxworth reports 15 requests for rare blood types each month.

Gavin Patch with Community Blood Center in Dayton said the Center takes four to five requests per day, mostly for blood types specific to African-American patients.

"The biggest request and the toughest request in the country right now is Rh negative and U negavite donors.  U is an antigen that can only be negative in African Americans," said Patch.

Patch said he's required to screen around a thousand donors per year for uncommon types as part of the rare blood program. The chief medical officer of the Hoxworth Blood Center at the University of Cincinnatisaid most requests are done quietly, but the extremely rare nature of the Florida girl's case prompted the nationwide push.