New Jersey girl with rare leukemia needs bone marrow donor
By Arun Kristian Das
Jackie Erb (Courtesy of the Erb family)
CHATHAM, N.J. - A New Jersey community is coming together to help a 5-year-old girl who has a rare form of blood cancer and urgently needs a bone marrow transplant. Jackie Erb, of Summit, has juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia, which occurs in just one or two children per million each year.
Jackie is the daughter of Lauren Gonnella and Brian Erb, a special education teacher at Chatham High School in Chatham. The school district and the Chatham Education Association, which represents the district s educators, have teamed with the organization Be The Match to hold a marrow-donor screening drive both in-person at a local COVID-safe drive-thru event and online to anyone in the country.