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The
National Marrow Donor Program
A Chance to be a
Hero
●12-01-2005 When the
approximately 30,000 individuals in need of
a bone marrow transplant annually look for
help, only 30 percent of patients will be
able to find a match within their own
family. For the other seventy percent of
patients, their only hope is to find a match
within the general public.
The National Marrow Donor Program is a
registry of unrelated stem cell
donors--people just like you who've agreed
to have themselves tissue-typed, and who
have agreed to be available until their 61st
birthday for anyone that might be at match
and is in need of a transplant.
Requiring just a small moment of your
time, and just a few drops of blood for
tissue type testing, you could literally be
the last chance a person with Leukemia or
other blood diseases has at life.
And--contrary to popular belief being a
donor is NOT a horribly painful procedure.
There are two ways to get the life
saving stem cells; from the hip under
medication or through a technique called
peripheral blood stem cell collection or
PBSC--which is just like giving blood!
One of our main goals at the National
Marrow Donor Program is to add diversity to
our registry of volunteer donors. With 5
million members, Caucasian patients can
expect to find an unrelated stem cells donor
about 90 percent of the time through the
registry.
However, Hispanic or Latinos will only
find their match in about 70% percent of the
cases. Asian and Pacific Islanders find
their match around 60 percent of the time,
and Blacks and Africans fall down to as low
as 45%.
Find out just how effortless it is for
you to become a hero, and provide the means
to save someone's life. If interested in
becoming a donor e-mail
www.newsletter623.net with your name
and a way to get hold of you or call
George Jansky at the Union Hall 320-251-8732
Thank You:
Local Lodge 623 |
