Leukemia Victim’s Sister in Vienna on Way to Give Marrow

VIENNA —  Inessa Fleurov, trying to hide tears of joy, arrived here with her family from the Soviet Union today, en route to Israel where she hopes to donate bone marrow to her leukemia-stricken brother.

“I am happy, very happy,” Fleurov said after the flight from Moscow. “I hope I will be able to help my brother. I think with my will and his will together . . . we’ll be able to do something.”

Fleurov, 37; her husband Viktor, 38, and their two daughters reached the West after winning a bureaucratic battle with Soviet emigration officials.

Fleurov’s ailing brother, Mikhail Shirman, who flew to Reykjavik, Iceland, to confront Soviet officials during the U.S.-Soviet summit last month, has said he hopes to see her Tuesday in Israel.

Fleurov hopes medical tests will show that her bone marrow is sufficiently compatible with her brother’s to allow her to be a donor in an operation that could help him survive. Bone-marrow donors usually have to be close relatives.