Norah needs you

While most young girls are playing with their dolls and friends, five-year-old Norah Gratz-Lazarus is fighting for her life.

The family of a five-year-old girl is desperately searching for a bone marrow donor as she battles a rare blood disorder.

Norah Gratz-Lazarus, from Alameda, California, was diagnosed with a genetic disease called fanconi anemia. Fanconi anemia is a rare, inherited blood disorder in which bone marrow cannot make enough new blood cells.

Fanconi anemia occurs in one in 160,000 people worldwide and is most common among Ashkenazi Jews – like Norah – and black South Africans, according to the National Institutes of Health.

In the US, just 31 babies are born with the disease every year.

Treatments include blood transfusions, bone marrow transplants and medication to help the body make more red blood cells. The cure is a bone marrow transplant, but neither of her parents nor her younger brother are matches.

For months, Norah’s family has been searching for a bone marrow donor but, of the seven million people on the national donor registry, not one person in the system found to be a match.

Norah is relying on a stranger to be her perfect match so she can continue to play with her dolls and friends.