Andrew Clark – Staff Writer
This past Monday, Be The Match tabled outside of the Cafeteria. This was in an effort to add Gustavus students to the Be The Match Registry. The Registry is a list of eligible donors to give blood stem cells to children suffering from blood cancer. This is to establish more opportunities for children to receive the life-saving transplants that they need.
What is Be The Match? Be The Match is a non-profit organization that specializes in blood stem cell research and transplants to help cure countless children of life-threatening blood cancers. It was founded in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1986, and its headquarters now resides in Minneapolis. Be The Match is looking for more donors to add to their registry to make treatment for children more accessible.
Be The Match was founded on its love for children as well as new scientific innovations regarding blood stem cell research. In 1979, a 10 year old named Laura was diagnosed with Leukemia and received an experimental bone marrow transplant in a desperate attempt to save her life. Miraculously, she was saved due to that bone marrow transplant given by an unrelated donor. This sparked a whole new scientific revolution within the cancer research community, and from it, a database that was later named the Be The Match Registry emerged.
Be the Match still stands upon the same principles that it was originally founded on while helping as many children as possible to find cures for their life-threatening cancers. Be The Match is currently looking for eligible donors for countless children including Ari, a 19-month old child that is suffering from a blood disease. Ari desperately needs a transplant, but unfortunately does not currently have an eligible donor that he can receive this transplant from.
Blood cancer is more common than a lot of people realize, and it affects people of all ages. Be The Match helps people of all ages, but leans more toward trying to find donors for children specifically. Every three minutes another person is diagnosed with blood cancer. Over 1.3 million people are either currently battling blood cancer or are in remission from it. Leukemia is the most common childhood blood cancer with over 28 percent of all childhood cancer being Leukemia cases.
Over 56,000 people battling blood cancers are expected to lose that battle, and Be The Match is trying to reduce that number to as small as they can, but they need people like you to help! Be The Match is looking for donors between the ages of 18 and 40 to join the Registry to hopefully become an eligible donor to help children suffering from blood cancer.
Anyone between the ages of 18 and 40 can join the registry, and it is a very simple process. With a simple cheek swab, you can be added to the registry to be eligible for donation. Your cheek swab will then be sent into the lab to be tested to see if they can find someone that you can match with. Many people do not get matched right away and can be put onto the Registry for months or even years before they are matched with anyone. A matter of minutes for you could mean the difference between life and death for someone who is battling life-threatening blood cancer.
If you are matched with someone, there will be two options to donate a life-saving blood stem cell donation. About 80 percent of donors will be asked to provide stem cells collected from circulating blood called a peripheral blood stem cell donation (PBSC) donation. About 20 percent of donors are asked to provide blood stem cells that are collected from bone marrow from the pelvic bone.
Even if you missed when Be The Match was tabling, there are still ways that you can help. There are QR codes around campus or you can text “gusthelion” to 61474. Be The Match will send a simple cheek swab kit so that you can be entered into the Be The Match Registry. For more information, please contact Keesha Mason at kmason2@nmdp.org.