Sehyun Kim 19, Traneka Davis 33, and Chao Wei Yu 33, are looking for marrow donors who could save their lives. Mayor Pulido’s personal friend Lovell is also someone who needed a matching donor. Patients suffering from leukemia, aplastic anemia, non hodgkins lymphoma, myelodysplastic syndrome and other blood related disorders could be cured with a bone marrow transplant from a matching donor.
Only 30% of the patients find matches from within their family and 70% have to look for unrelated donors like you. A patient is more likely to find a match from within his or her racial or ethnic background. This is because HLA markers used in matching are inherited and could be traced to its geographic origin.
The national program has more than 10 million people on their database. Off which over 7 million are Caucasians and the rest are African American, Asian and Pacific Islander, Hispanic, mixed race, and other minorities. Diversifying the database is important to make sure that every searching patient could find his or her life-saving match.
Over 68 percent of Cerritos population is from diverse communities. We would like to invite you to support the program to help save lives!
To join please stop by at any of the following donor registration drives:
May 3 at Cerritos Farmers Market -8am to 12pm
May 7 at Cerritos Library -3pm to 7pm
Joining the Be The Match Registry is easy.
– You must be in general good health and be willing to donate to any patient in need.
– Be between the ages of 18 and 44.
– Complete a registration form with contact information, basic health information and a consenting signature to join the Be The Match Registry.
– Give cheek cell sample on swabs to be tissue-typed. The results are used to match you to patients.
