Grandmother on fifth walk across continents to boost stem cell donor registry

Jeana Moore is in the middle of her fifth cross-continental walk to save lives — and it's working. The 73-year-old grandmother has crossed into Canada after 45 days and over 570 kilometres, carrying QR codes on her neck and backpack that direct people to join the stem cell donor registry.

Moore started this mission nearly two decades ago after her granddaughter Jada was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia shortly after birth. Jada, now 19, needed a stem cell transplant to survive. The search for a donor was agonizing: 11 million people were screened before a match was found — seven in the United States, four in Europe. The single perfect match was located in Germany. "They searched 11 million people, seven in the U.S. and four in Europe because of our ethnicity and they found one perfect match in Germany," Moore said.

The rarity of the match — driven by ethnic diversity in donor registries — spurred Moore to act. She founded the Jada Bascom foundation and has since walked over 11,000 kilometres across multiple continents, all to raise awareness that every individual could be a lifesaving match for someone waiting right now.

On her fifth walk, over 500 people have already clicked the QR code to find the stem cell registry in Canada and inquire about signing up, according to Eric Belden, Community Development Manager with Canadian Blood Services. "On her fifth walk, over 500 people have clicked to find the stem cell registry in my country, how can I sign up and potentially be the match that a patient needs," Belden told the source. "Each individual, you don't know, you may be the perfect match for someone who's waiting right now," Moore said.

Moore's story has made an impact on blood donation rates in Canada and internationally. Her walks have proven that a single grandmother's determination — paired with a simple QR code — can move hundreds of people to join a registry that might one day save a life.