Documentary screening leads to 65 new registrations for stem cell donation
The screening of The Perfect Match led to the addition of 65 new donors to Canada’s stem cell registry and raised awareness of barriers to stem cell donation.
Alice Hategekimana is working through applying to be on the stem cell registry with a Canadian Blood Services volunteer. Photo credit: Samara Murray
The Perfect Match documentary follows Jacob Marfo’s efforts to find a matching stem cell donor for his infant son, Ezra.
The Ezra Marfo Cancer Foundation held a stem cell drive at the film screening and got 65 individuals added to Canada’s Stem Cell Registry.
Ezra Marfo was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, RAM phenotype Acute Myeloid Leukemia, in 2021. That year, only 1.53 percent of individuals on the Canadian Stem Cell Registry were of African, Caribbean or Black descent.
Ezra needed a perfect stem cell match as part of his treatment, but his African descent made matching extremely difficult within the Canadian registry. He died in 2022, still waiting for that perfect match.
As of 2026 only 2.20 per cent of the Canadian stem-cell registry was made up of African, Caribbean and Black individuals.
The documentary screened Oct. 1 at the Triffo Theatre at MacEwan University. At the event, The Ezra Marfo Cancer Foundation said they swabbed and registered 65 attendees.
Alice Hategekimana, a student at MacEwan University, was motivated and inspired by the film to donate and was one of the 65.
“It’s something so easy,” she said. “I just think it’s a good, meaningful thing to do for others.”
To join the registry, individuals need to complete an online form. Then a swabbing kit is delivered to their address, where they will swab their mouth and ship it back to Canadian Blood Services, free of charge.
“There are so many things that you don’t learn at school or university,” attendee Leonardo Viliani said.
Events like this are important for raising awareness and to know that “you can do so much by just swabbing,” he said.
At the screening’s Q&A, Catherine Whelan, a registered nurse at the Royal Alexandra Hospital, spoke about language barriers in cord blood donation. 
Whelan said the umbilical cord blood program for stem cell donation in Canada offers donor information in only six languages: English, French, Punjabi, simple and traditional Chinese, and Arabic.
The lack of African languages within the program underserves the community, “and it kills me,” Whelan said.
Kailey Lambert did the music for The Perfect Match and hopes that people who see the film are inspired. “You can do so little to change so much in someone else’s life,” she said.
For more information, visit Canada’s Stem Cell Registry.
