If you cannot be a Maradona, you can certainly be a Marrow Donor

April 30th, 2010 admin Posted in Information | No Comments »

Kavita (my wife) and I recently learned about bone marrow donation, and why it is important to register with the National Bone Marrow Donor registry. Kavita registered at a drive that was being conducted at a charity event being organized in the area. Through her I came to know about SaveVinod.com. I learned that is very difficult to find a bone marrow match (1 in 100,000) and it is therefore important to keep the database of potential donors as large as possible. Further, some ethnic groups have very few listed donors – Indians (South Asians) is one such under represented group.

To sign up I had to fill a form at the National Marrow Donor Program website. Then, about 4 days later I received a testing kit in an envelope by regular mail. The testing kit basically contained 4 swabs to collect cheek cells with. I did that. It took about 2 minutes. (Aside: All that “collecting cheek cells” involves is opening your mouth and rubbing the cotton swabs against the inner cheek for 10 seconds. This collects some of the cheek cells on the swab. it is not visible to the eye, but apparently that is all they need. ) Then I put the swabs back in the return envelope they send, and posted it. That is it. The entire process was free and streamlined.

When I try to donate blood with Red Cross I typically need to wait 1 year after a trip to India. This rule often seriously curtails my ability to donate blood. But then, maybe blood donation is more prevalent and since there are only a handful of types it is easier to find a match quickly on demand. It is probably more expensive to collect blood and then test each unit of blood separately for potential risk factors based on where the donor has been in the last 1 year. With marrow, the matches are so rare that the first step is to keep a large database of potential donors, and upon a match the appropriate tests can be conducted to rule out any potential problems with the donor. Typically only 1% of the people on the potential-donor database are actually ever contacted for a donation. And the donation itself is a pretty safe and quick process. It may require you to take a day off from work, and be under local anesthesia when the marrow is being drawn. You need to be between 18 and 60 years old. The donated marrow regenerates in your body in a few weeks.

I encourage you to register, a small but important, painless and free first step. And if you are the 1% who eventually (years down the line) gets a call asking for a donation, I am pretty sure you will feel good about it.