Even when a lot of people sign up to be bone marrow donors, finding a match for someone who needs a bone marrow transplant can be difficult. Yale University's football program is defying those odds. Since 2012, three members of the football program's staff and one player have donated bone marrow to recipients with whom they matched.
A total of two dozen people associated with Yale University in some way have donated bone marrow or blood cells through the national Be the Match registry. In the football program, Chris Gennaro, director of football operations for the university, donated in the fall of 2012. Then, his assistant Zach Wigmore was tapped, followed by Paul Rice, coach for the team's linebackers. Player John Oppenheimer, has also donated bone marrow.
Yale University has been active in bone marrow transplantation because of a 2009 registration drive for Mandi Schwartz, who was a hockey player at Yale. Sadly, Schwartz never found a match and died in 2011 of leukemia.
According to Be the Match, only about 1 in 540 potential donors are ever matched to a patient in need.
Bone marrow transplants are needed for people who have leukemia, multiple myeloma, and severe blood disorders such as thalassemia, aplastic anemia, and sickle cell anemia. The bone marrow transplant must be carefully matched to the blood and tissue type of the recipient. The same diseases can be treated with umbilical cord blood, which is blood collected from the umbilical cord of a newborn baby. Cord blood is then stored in public cord blood banks around the country.
When someone registers as a bone marrow donor, a swab is rubbed on the inside of the cheek. This swab contains some cells that are tissue typed. This information is then kept on file and is compared to the blood and tissue type of people who need a donation.
There are about 18,000 people in the United States who are waiting for a bone marrow transplant or an umbilical cord blood transplant, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration, part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
For more information on registering as a bone marrow donor, go to: http://bloodcell.transplant.hrsa.gov/index.html.