HURLBURT FIELD, Fla -- The C.W. Bill Young Department of Defense Marrow Donor Recruitment and Research Program has scheduled a bone marrow drive, here, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Base Exchange, Mini-Mall and 1st Special Operations Medical Group, Nov. 16-18.
Using this program, members of the DOD can volunteer to become part of the National Marrow Donor Program and will automatically become part of the national registry.
“Our goal is to increase the number of committed and available donors on the registry,” said Capt. Jamie Williamson, diagnostic and therapeutic flight commander at the 1st SOMDG. “Additionally, it will decrease the time it takes to provide donor cells and provide a donor for every patient in need of transplantation.”
Once a member completes a registration kit and returns it to the donor program, the samples are assigned a unique donor identification number and the human leukocyte type, or white blood cell, is identified. Then the sample is added to a national database.
The national database is a system available to all patients that are in need of a transplant and not limited to only DOD personnel.
“Approximately 70 percent of individuals in need of a transplant cannot find a donor within their own family,” Williamson said. “A Hurlburt Team member was diagnosed with leukemia and will likely need a bone marrow transplant. Since she doesn’t have a family member who matches, she will reach out to the national bone marrow registry to find a match--hence the importance.”
If a DOD member is selected to be a donor, the donor program will reach out to that individual and provide education, additional health screenings and will make arrangements for donation.
“In the United States, someone is diagnosed with blood cancer approximately once every three minutes and once every 10 minutes someone succumbs to their disease,” Williamson said. “Bone marrow transplants can be used to treat blood cancers and dozens of other diseases and disorders, but only if there is a willing and well-matched donor available.”