The collapse of phone lines provided by PCCW during a TV fund-raising programme might have cost more than $500,000 in lost donations, a charity said yesterday.
The Hong Kong Marrow Match Foundation came up with the estimate after 60 lines failed for about 45 minutes on Sunday night during the TVB show.
The sum would have covered the cost of adding about 1,000 new donors to the register, foundation vice-president Dr Brian Hawkins said.
Alternatively, it could have funded the supply of three bone-marrow samples from overseas for people who could not get matches locally, he said.
'There are patients who are looking for donors and they are difficult tissue types to match. The next donor who enrols could be the one donor a patient somewhere is waiting for,' Dr Hawkins said. Asked if the loss could have meant someone missing out on a life-saving transplant, Dr Hawkins said: 'I guess we can put it in those terms. We will never know.'
Volunteers staffing the phones - including celebrities such as Andy Lau Tak-wah, CoCo Lee and Dicky Cheung Wai-kin - were alarmed not to receive calls for donations. 'It was only when we tried to ring the number ourselves that we realised the hotline was not working,' donor co-ordinator Marven Chin said.