A TEENAGER with a rare blood condition who campaigns for bone marrow donor awareness is holding a fundraising event for Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity.
Devaanshi Mehta, 15, of Manor Road, Harrow, suffers from aplastic anaemia and is dependent on having a life-saving transfusion of tiny blood-clotting cells called platelets every eight days.
The Nower Hill High School pupil is encouraging supporters to eat at the restaurant her father manages - Spice Rack Lounge in Church Road, Stanmore - this coming Sunday at 7pm.
Her mother Kalyani Mehta said: “It's in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and it's a three course meal - £20 for adults and £15 for children under 12.
"The money is going specifically to the hospital's bone marrow transplant unit as we feel it saved Devaanshi's life."
Mrs Mehta said Devaanshi has not been too well lately and has been an in-patient at the hospital in central London recently. But the teenager was hoping to be discharged before the weekend in order to sit down for the dinner with everyone else.
Devaanshi – who has in the past won an award from the Jack Petchey Foundation for her campaigning - had two bone marrow transplants from younger brother Dushyant in 2007 and 2008, when he was just two years old, and in doing so inherited his rarer blood type, which makes finding a matching platelets donor more difficult.
The family's previous fundraising meal at Spice Rack Lounge in 2010 raised £740 for the hospital.
