Bone Marrow Registry Drive at Saint Francis

Saint Francis Medical Center and the Cape Girardeau County Area Medical Society Alliance will host a bone marrow registry drive benefitting the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) on Tuesday, January 25, from 3 to 7 pm in the Franciscan Conference Room, 211 Saint Francis Drive.

Every year, more than 10,000 patients in the U.S. are diagnosed with life-threatening diseases such as leukemia or lymphoma for which a marrow or cord blood transplant from an unrelated donor may be their best or only hope of a cure.

Most patients (about 70 percent) in need of a transplant do not have a matching donor in their family. They depend on the NMDP's Be The Match Registry® to find an unrelated donor or cord blood unit.

"We are always looking for worthy medical causes, and this is something that has never been done here before -- and is a great need," says Denise Salmon, Medical Alliance Bone Marrow Donor Registry chair. "It is so simple and noninvasive to register, we really hope people will consider giving."

To join the registry, the donor must be between the ages of 18 and 60, be willing to donate to any patient in need, and meet the health guidelines set by the NMDP. The complete health guidelines are available at www.bethematch.org. Donors give a swab of cheek cells to be tissue-typed. The NMDP then uses the results to match donors to patients. In unable to join the registry, monetary donations also will be accepted.

The majority of donations do not involve surgery. Today, the patient's doctor most often requests a peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) donation, which is non-surgical. The second way of donating is marrow donation, which is a surgical procedure. In both cases, donors typically go home the same day they donate.

On average, more than 60,000 new potential donors join the Be The Match Registry each month. Nearly 723,000 new potential donors joined in 2010. Since it began operations in 1987, the NMDP has facilitated more than 43,000 marrow, PBSC and cord blood transplants for patients who do not have matching donors in their families.

The NMDP operates the Be The Match Registry, the world's largest and most diverse registry of potential marrow donors and donated cord blood units. With 9 million potential donors and more than 185,000 searchable cord blood units, the growing registry is helping more patients than ever before get the transplant they need.

The National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) and Be The Match Foundation® are nonprofit organizations dedicated to creating an opportunity for all patients to receive the bone marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant they need, when they need it.