CSS students coordinate a bone marrow donation drive to help save lives of many people in need of a bone marrow transplant

Release Date: 11/04/09
Students of The College of St. Scholastica will conduct a bone marrow donor drive from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 3, in the Student Union on campus. The public is invited to participate.

The Student Union is in the lower level of Tower Hall; free parking is available at the Mitchell Auditorium parking lot outside Tower Hall.

The goal is to recruit as many bone marrow donors as possible to help save the lives of patients in need of a bone marrow transplant. Every year, thousands of people are diagnosed with leukemia or other blood cancers, and many can be cured with a life-giving transplant. The more donors who register, the more lives can be saved.

Last year St. Scholastica hosted the first public bone marrow donor drive in northern Minnesota. This year's event is the second. The College will partner again with DKMS, the world's largest bone marrow donor center, to stage the event. More than 18,500 DKMS donors have helped save lives by donating their bone marrow.

"Last year, during the first drive, we recruited 276 donors in one day, and four of them were possible matches to leukemia patients," said chief coordinator Bingshuo Li. He is a senior psychology and pre-medicine student at St. Scholastica. "In this year's drive we would like to register at least 500 new donors. We want to bring hope to leukemia patients, their families and friends and keep saving lives!"

Only three in 10 patients will find a matching donor, Li said. "With this drive, we are hoping to do our part to improve the odds."

The registration requires filling a registration form and a swab of the cheek, something the participants do themselves. There is no blood involved. Registration form and tissue typing info will be entered into the national Be The Match Registry and can be found as a donor match for any patient in need of a bone marrow transplant.

Katharina Harf, co-founder of DKMS Americas, said: "I lost my mother to leukemia when I was 14, and I have made it my mission to recruit more donors so that other families don't have to go the through the pain we did. We need donors' help so we can save more lives."

A participant must fully understand and sign the consent form before the sampling. The post-drive laboratory work and registry entry will be handled by DKMS Americas. The donor should also be willing to consider donating his or her bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cells if his or her marrow tissue type can be matched with a leukemia patient.

Registering as a donor is a moral commitment to the patient, Li said. If the donor chooses, he or she can be removed from the registry at any time.

Li and the other students in the planning committee are members of St. Scholastica's Rotaract Club, a service club for young men and women ages 18 to 30 that is a part of Rotary International.

For more information about the bone marrow drive at St. Scholastica visit http://www.css.edu/drive.xml or contact Li at (347) 286-1157or bli@css.edu..

For more information about DKMS visit www.dkmsamericas.org.