Marrow donor registration set for Aug. 17 at BX

  • Published
  • By Senior Master Sgt. Anthony Cardan
  • 355th Component Maintenance Squadron
DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. --  The C.W. Bill Young Department of Defense Marrow Donor Program will be registering marrow-donor volunteers at the base exchange Aug. 17 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Each year more than 30,000 adults and children are diagnosed with leukemia or other fatal blood diseases. After initial treatments fail, many of those people have only one hope for survival - a lifesaving bone marrow transplant.

Sadly, more than 70 percent of marrow transplant candidates must search for a matching donor outside of their immediate family. Since the late 1980s, the National Marrow Donor Program has used its registry of more than 5 million donor volunteers to enable more than 10,000 unrelated transplants. The odds of patients finding a lifesaving match will improve as more potential donors are added to the registry.

The DOD MDP, one of almost 100 MDP donor centers around the country, seeks potential donors from within the DOD community around the globe. In addition to its humanitarian mission, the DOD MDP has a military contingency mission to provide immediate donor searches in the event of a mass casualty incident involving chemical agents or nuclear exposure that damages bone marrow.

Anyone between the ages of 18 and 60, in good general health, and not previously registered is eligible. Most of the current blood donation restrictions do not apply to the marrow program - you can register even if you have lived overseas, have a cold, or are taking most medications.

Registration is simple, free and only takes about 15 minutes. At the donor registration drive, potential donors will fill out a consent form then swab the inside of their mouth to provide cells for testing. Blood samples are no longer required.

Potential donors remain in the registry until age 60 and will be contacted if they ever become a preliminary match for a patient. Only after further testing and more education on the process will they actually commit to giving the gift of life. There is no cost at any time to the donor or his/her organization or base.

The procedure is usually done under local or general anesthesia and takes less than two hours, with a typical overnight hospital stay. The bone marrow is extracted from the back of the pelvic bone with a needle/syringe technique and the small amount removed replenishes itself within weeks, so the only effect the donor feels is some soreness at the extraction site. New advances also enable some donors to provide peripheral blood stem cells instead of bone marrow, depending on the needs of the recipient.

Previous donors say the small amount of pain or discomfort for either procedure is well worth the knowledge they are saving someone's life.

For more info, contact Senior Master Sgt. Tony Cardan at 228-2133 or anthony.cardan@us.af.mil, or Tech. Sgt. Ron Heilman at 228-2133 or Ronald.heilman@us.af.mil. You can also contact the DOD MDP at www.DODmarrow.org or call 1-800-MARROW-3.