The mother of a 24-year-old leukaemia patient who spent his final days in hospital doing all he could to support other cancer sufferers is launching the website he built from his death bed.
Kevin Kararwa, of Canterbury Road in Morden, launched an appeal from his isolation ward in King's College Hospital last year to get 2,400 people of African and Caribbean heritage to join the bone marrow register - 100 for every year he lived.
He died one week later, without seeing his target reached.
He set up a website – www.hconnect.co.uk – as a form of social networking for people with cancer, but did not see it go live before his death last May.
Now his mother Veronica Kararwa is inviting people to a free event where there will be the website launch, a service and talks from Croydon charity The African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust (ACLT), which supported the Kararwa family during Kevin’s illness.
Miss Kararwa is continuing her son’s legacy of getting as many people as possible from black and ethnic minority groups to register as bone marrow donors.
She said: "He had a legacy of wanting to get people from ethnic minorities to join the register.
"He had started this website in hospital.
"He wanted to connect people going through what he was going through.
"He wasn’t able to launch it so I want to make his wish come true."
The UK register is made up of about 900,000 people, of which 99.9 per cent are White British.
It was given a significant boost by a Wimbledon family recently who started a Facebook campaign to find a match for father Rob Ireland.
Daughters of cancer victim overwhelmed by international response to Facebook plea
Three sisters, pictured above with their father Rob and mother, from Arthur Road turned to Facebook to find a match for father who was diagnosed with an aggressive blood cancer.
He has a five per cent chance of survival unless they find a stem cell match soon.
A group on Facebook has more than 11,500 members, with another page topping 22,000 likes from all over the world.
Mr Kararwa, who was of Kenyan heritage, never found a match despite launching a worldwide appeal. Doctors decided his only chance was to receive a 50 per cent matched transplant from his younger brother Ian.
His health initially improved but he relapsed in May and was given one week to live. He died on May 19 last year.
His mother said she wants to educate people and is in the process of setting up a charity – the Kevin Leukaemia Trust – in his name.
She said: "When the hospital told him they have to look across the whole world [for a match], we realised it was a different picture.
"African people didn’t have a register.
"I had calls from Kenya from people who wanted to help but they didn’t know how to."
Miss Kararwa said the Kenyan community in Merton did not know much about leukaemia until they heard about Kevin’s case.
The free memorial event will be held at the Mitcham and Tooting Football Club in Bishopsford Road, Morden, on Saturday, June 20 from 4pm.
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