Signing up for the National Marrow Donor Program is easier than you think. YOU could end up save someone's life and all it takes is for you to say YES! Only around 30% of patients can find a suitably HLA matched donor among their family members. For the remaining 70%, an unrelated donor is required. Because the odds that two random individuals will be HLA matched exceeds 1 in 20,000, a registry will not be successful unless it contains a very large number of volunteer donors.

Soccer For Hope has hosted only a handful of Bone Marrow Drives BUT has signed up more than 100 people for the for the National Marrow Donor Program. Each day, more than 6,000 patients search the NMDP Registry for an unrelated donor to treat diseases including Leukemia, severe Aplastic Anemia, Lymphoma, sickle cell disease and more than 70 other life-threatening illnesses. Today, a patient's transplant options have expanded beyond marrow to now include all three sources of blood stem cells: marrow, peripheral blood stem cells and umbilical cord blood. On average, the NMDP facilitates more than 260 transplants each month for patients who do not have matching donors in their families.

The NMDP maintains relationships with donor centers, transplant centers and other registries in 35 countries outside of the United States and more than 40 percent of all transplants facilitated involve an International Donor or Recipient. The NMDP is committed to supporting the communities it serves. Through ongoing initiatives, the NMDP works with civic, community, corporate and faith-based organizations to recruit volunteers and add cord blood units from diverse communities. They have made great strides, and the likelihood of finding a match has increased dramatically for patients from all racial and ethnic groups. Nevertheless, some patients are unable to find a match because they have less common tissue traits. Because these traits are inherited, a patient's most likely match is someone of the same heritage. Although the NMDP has the single largest listing of cord blood units in the US, only 15 percent are from minority donors. Sign up today!!! www.marrow.org

First, fill out some paperwork…


then, give a cheek swab.