National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP)
Each Year, more
than 30,000 people are diagnosed with leukemia, aplastic anemia
and other life threatening blood diseases. The best hope for these
patients is a transplant of healthy marrow from someone who shares
their marrow type.
The DTM operates
a Marrow Donor Center for the education, recruitment and testing
of healthy persons interested in becoming potential bone marrow
donors. Persons registering for this program are tested for HLA
type and this information is entered in a national registry managed
by the National Marrow Donor
Program (NMDP). If a volunteer participant in this program is
found by the NMDP to be a "perfect" HLA match for a patient
in need of a bone marrow transplant, then the NIH Donor Center will
notify and counsel the donor, arrange for the collection of marrow
in a local NMDP-approved hospital, and coordinate transportation
of the marrow to the patient requiring the transplant. Greater than
two million people are currently registered with the NMDP as potential
marrow donors and approximately 40,000 of these individuals have
joined the registry through their participation in the NIH Marrow
Donor Center.
The characteristics
of marrow are inherited in the same way as hair and eye color. The
best chance of finding a matched donor is from a sibling. But 70%
of patients do not find a suitable match within their own families.
These patients must find an unrelated matched person with healthy
marrow, most likely from their same racial or ethnic background.
The NMDP and the NIH Marrow Donor Program are committed to increasing
the number of potential donors of minority background in order to
provide a better chance to find a "match" for minority
patients.
Interested individuals
may contact the NIH Marrow Donor Center:
Telephone: (301)
496-0572
National Institutes of Health
6011 Executive Blvd., Suite 357
Rockville, MD 20852
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