Hard Graft

At a time of no hope, drastic change required a brand-new belief system. To abandon hope of a miracle and put faith in a stranger.Blood is essential to life. But what happens when there's a glitch in the system? Up to the 1960s, a child diagnosed with a severe blood disease had only a 1-in-10 chance of living to adulthood. It was an almost certain death sentence. By the 1980s, a child with the exact same disorder had a 9-in-10 chance of survival. Hard Graft is a true story chronicled for the first-time. It explores the previously untold agony and resilience of Liz Bostic - a mother who refused to accept the deadly diagnosis facing her infant son, Simon. She started something momentous which, in partnership with others, transformed survival rates for people with blood diseases across the world. We learn how scientific world-firsts and fortunate medical discoveries led her family to the brink of salvation and how self-sabotage nearly forced everything to fall apart. 2023 is the 50th anniversary of the world's first successful non-related bone marrow transplant - that of Simon Bostic in April 1973. All these years later, however, the treatment faces a fresh crisis in the wake of COVID-19. With global volunteer donor registrations down dramatically, by an average of 60% since the pandemic, this story discovering the life-saving importance of bone marrow transplantation is as relevant now as ever.