Donors needed—especially African, Caribbean, and Asian

Edited from two posts at kino-kid.livejournal.com/. The donor registries are international; no matter where you live, no matter what your ethnicity is, if you register, you may save a life.

Emru Townsend has Acute Myelogenous Leukemia, and he and his family are hoping a compatible donor registers in the unrelated database.

Carolyn Tam has Acute Myelogenous Leukemia, just like Emru, and she and her family are hoping a compatible donor registers in the unrelated database.

The person who is most likely to match Emru or Carolyn is someone with the same or similar ethnic background.

If you are one of the white patients and in need of a bone marrow transplant, 75 percent find a suitable donor. For everyone else, that number tumbles to 10-30% percent (I have not been able to find a breakdown by ethnicity for the latter group). This includes people who receive transplants involving an international donor.

There are 500,000 registrants who identified as African-American in the US and if you think that this is large number of people, you are WRONG. They consider it a shortage. Because of the complexity of matching, hundreds of thousands of people are needed worldwide to find someone who is Emru’s genetic twin in terms of their bone marrow. None of the 11 million people already in the worldwide database match Emru. He just needs to find one match who is registered.

If 30,000 people of African Caribbean descent registered in Canada, it would be a SHORTAGE. In Canada as of March 31, 2008, there are only 1633 black people registered as unrelated potential donors.

There were only 50 registered by that time in Quebec.

There are 350 000 registrants in China and if you think that this is  large number of people, you are WRONG. Because of the complexity of matching, hundreds of thousands of people are needed of this background to find someone who is Carolyn’s genetic twin in terms of their bone marrow (someone with the same combination of ten genetic markers that form the human leukocyte antigen - HLA -  complex).

In Canada as of March 31, 2008, there are only 233 Chinese people registered as unrelated potential donors. If there were 10,000 Chinese people registered in Canada it would be a SHORTAGE.

Save Carolyn.

( Chinese/English information for about registration in Canada (outside of Quebec) and donation. If you can write Chinese instructions for how to register in Quebec PLEASE LET ME KNOW. )

Heal Emru.

( Break these four myths about bone marrow donation and registration. It is the first step to saving lives. )