Young Broadway star succumbs to leukemia

New York, Agency
Young Hispanic actress Shannon Tavarez, who had played a role in the musical "The Lion King" on Broadway, lost her battle against leukemia and died in New York, the Web site Broadway.com reported on Tuesday.

Tavarez, who made her New York stage debut in September 2009 in the role of "Nala" in the musical inspired by the well-known Disney animated film and whose fight against leukemia mobilized the entire Broadway community, died Monday after battling the disease for seven months.

The 11-year-old actress had fallen ill in April with flu-like symptoms.

At first, her doctors thought that she had a simple viral infection, but several days later, when the only thing that had changed was that her fever had lessened, they did a blood test on her that discovered the leukemia.

After that diagnosis, the girl's life changed radically because she lost her hair due to the chemotherapy treatments and needed to stick to a special diet.

In August, she received a stem cell transplant from umbilical cord blood to combat the disease, after which it became difficult to find bone marrow donors.

Just 30 percent of patients can find a donor in their own immediate families and the rest need to locate someone outside the family.

In Tavarez's case, the situation was even more complicated because she was the child of an Hispanic father and an African-American mother, the two segments of the population with the least number of registered bone marrow donors.

That difficulty led the Broadway community this year to organize several events whereby they tried to find a donor for the girl and called attention to the situation she was going through with her family.

Shannon's battle with leukemia captured the attention of artists like Alicia Keys, Rihanna and 50 Cent, who publicly supported the cause of the young soprano.