African American Bone Marrow Awareness Month

July is African American Bone Marrow Awareness Month

African American Bone Marrow Awareness Month is observed in July. Donating marrow can cure someone with sickle cell anemia or life-threatening blood cancers. But only 6 out of 10 African American patients will receive the bone marrow transplant they need. Bone marrow transplants often are used to treat leukemia, lymphomas, multiple myeloma, and other nonmalignant blood disorders, such as sickle cell anemia. Wear green or black and red during July to help raise awareness and join the registry today!

Wear Green or Black and Red for African American Bone Marrow Awareness Month

African Americans have a harder time finding a match. But many African Americans and other minorities can’t find marrow donors. Right now, the chance of finding a match on the Be The Match Registry is close to 93 percent for Caucasians, but for African Americans and other minorities, the chances can be as low as 66 percent. The tissue types used for matching patients with donors are inherited, so patients are most likely to find a match within their own racial or ethnic heritage. There are 9 million people on the Be The Match Registry, but only 7 percent are African American.

Many people think that donating is painful, that it always involves surgery, and a long recovery. But today, the patient’s doctor most often requests a peripheral blood stem cell donation, which is nonsurgical and similar to donating platelets or plasma. The second way of donating is marrow donation, which is a surgical procedure. General or regional anesthesia is always used. In each case, donors typically go home the same day they donate. Some people actually think we’re tampering with the spine or breaking open or removing bones, none of which is true. Also, donors never have to pay to donate. Travel costs and other costs may be reimbursed,

What it takes to save a life

You probably have a few questions about how donation affects your daily life:

• 85% of donations involve no surgery at all—it’s like donating plasma.
• Discomfort and side affects vary from person to person.
• It takes a few hours a week for a few weeks.
• It costs you nothing to donate.
• Donating doesn’t impact your ability to have kids.
• There are very few risks in our donation process. Every precaution is taken to ensure the safety and well-being of every donor.

Bone Marrow Registration

Registering as a bone marrow donor does not require a lot of work, and can even be done from the comfort of your home. Simply go online to BE THE MATCH to register. From there they will send you a swab with which you will collect a sample from your cheek. You then send in the swab and are added to a database of donors. The chance of someone getting called on to donate is about 1 in 430. It depends on the unique tissues that a donor possesses when determining their chances of being called upon to donate.

The process of donating bone marrow could go two different ways. The first possibility is when blood is taken from a donor’s arm, and is then put into a machine that separates the stem cells from the other blood, then put back into the patient through the other arm. The other method is when the marrow is extracted from the donor’s hip bones. Unlike other organs, when someone decides to donate bone marrow, it is not a part of you that is permanently lost. Bone marrow replaces itself in the span of four to six weeks.

After being placed into the registry, someone could get called months later, but also has the possibility of being called years later, or even not at all.