More on Mother's Day

I e-mailed a couple of questions to Susan Hamre of the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). Here is her reply:

In answer to your questions, there is always a cost to join the registry. This cost is for tissue typing, which is how a patient is matched to a life-saving donor. (The closer the match between the patient's tissue type and the donor's, the better for the patient.)

It costs $52 to test the tissue type of every new registry member. Knowing that the cost can be a barrier, we work with sponsors, search for grants, and ask for contributions from people year-round. This allows anyone to join the registry during the Thanks Mom campaign (May 5-19) without paying the cost for tissue typing (or until we reach our goal of 46,000 new registry members during the campaign).

One reason I'm so excited to be a part of the Thanks Mom campaign is because individuals who normally aren't able to donate because of cost can do so now. This campaign is all about helping others by becoming a donor and also by allowing more individuals the opportunity to more easily give the gift of becoming a donor.

Again, we are grateful for the financial donations of generous sponsors who allow the NMDP to make this kind of giving possible for so many more people.

I e-mailed her yet again to ask for more info about the need for minorities and people of mixed race to sign up for the registry--because I know that minority and mixed-race patients often have a very hard time finding a match.

I'll post her reply when it arrives.

Read my earlier post: What I Want for Mother's Day

Comments

[debutaunt]

The two patients I knew who died specifically because they didn't have the needed stem cell match were both from Mexico; one a four year old neighbor of my at my apartment near MD Anderson and one was good friend of mine who was going through treatment at the same time I was.

We are in South Texas. In San Antonio, there are so many Hispanics that *I* am the minority. For those two lovely people to die is really a shame. People just generally don't know anything about transplant science or have many misconceptions.

A lot of the people I see on our site, marrow.org, who are seeking matches usually are of mixed races - kind of like the makeup of the United States, no?

[debutaunt]

The two patients I knew who died specifically because they didn't have the needed stem cell match were both from Mexico; one a four year old neighbor of my at my apartment near MD Anderson and one was good friend of mine who was going through treatment at the same time I was.

We are in South Texas. In San Antonio, there are so many Hispanics that *I* am the minority. For those two lovely people to die is really a shame. People just generally don't know anything about transplant science or have many misconceptions.

A lot of the people I see on our site, marrow.org, who are seeking matches usually are of mixed races - kind of like the makeup of the United States, no?