Friday, April 13, 2012

Search for Bone Marrow Match


Friday, Apr. 13, 2012

Search for bone marrow match part of faire

By Corey Pride / Cpride@losbanosenterprise.com

In between the food, trinkets and knickknacks at Saturday's Downtown Spring Street Faire attendees will have the chance to save a life.

An advocacy group for multiracial people, Project Race, and the southern California-based City of Hope are holding a bone marrow donor drive as part of the faire along Sixth Street. The hours of the faire are 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Susan Graham, a Los Banos woman who is the executive director of Project Race said her group is specifically looking to find a bone marrow/stem cell donor for Krystle Delgado Felten, a 27-year-old woman suffering from leukemia. Felten is of Filipino and Hispanic descent, and in the case of bone marrow donation race matters. A person has to share the race or ethnicity of the person to whom they're donating bone marrow.

Aside from trying to find a match for Felton, Project Race and City of Hope are searching for donors of all ethnicities so they can be added to the national registry. "We may be out there for that one person, but if we don't watch out we might miss a person who could save a life," said Vivian Abernathy, City of Hope's community outreach specialist.

Graham said, in trying to find a match for Felten, her group has enlisted the help of the Filipino-American Association of Los Banos. Donors for Felten can be Asian, Hispanic or both.
"A woman from the Filipino group said she had somebody in Gilroy who is coming down. She's excited because (her friend) is Filipino and Hispanic," Graham said.

The chances of minorities finding bone marrow/stem cell donors through the national registry are less than whites because there are fewer people from minority groups sign up to be donors, Abernathy said. Whites have a 93 percent chance of finding a donor through the registry, Asians 73 percent, Hispanics 72 percent and blacks 66 percent, according to National Marrow Donor Program. There are 10,000 people diagnosed with leukemia or lymphoma in America each year.People interested in becoming donors must be between 18 and 60, in good health, willing to donate to anyone in need and must be willing to call back promptly when contacted about donating.

2 comments:

  1. Teen Project RACE is also organizing a drive for Krystle in New Jersey.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Our drive is on for this Sunday 10-2 at North Brunswick High School!

    ReplyDelete