Saving patients lives worldwide through stem cells

Over the past year, the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) and our member, The South African Bone Marrow Donor Registry (SABMR) have been working hard to host the 14th International Donor Registry Conference (IDRC) and WMDA Meetings.

Education is an essential part of WMDA. We aim to share knowledge, expertise and best practices to increase the chance of patients finding their best stem cell source and reducing the time to transplant.

The theme of the 14th IDRC is all patients and donors matter. Sadly, for many patients needing a stem cell transplant to cure blood cancer or a blood disorder such as Sickle Cell Disease, there is not a matching donor available. As a community, we are determined to change this. However, as non-profits and charities, we do not have the financial resources to change this overnight. That is why we prioritise education. 

We can share our knowledge, which has a ripple effect and reaches many healthcare professionals, who in turn can effect change in their own country and improve the outcome for their patients.

Next week, health professionals from 47 countries will come together to share knowledge, expertise and best practices. The most exciting part is that 12 countries are not WMDA members and are new to our community. These countries currently do not have donor registries, therefore the chance of their patients finding a matching donor is very small. Together, over the next days, weeks, months and years, we are going to change that and that is thanks to your support of WMDA over the past year.

To everyone who has donated, every penny, euro, dollar, shilling, rand will make a massive difference to patients everywhere and give families more hope. Thank you for making a life-saving difference!

Links:

• SABMR Video

WMDA’s Search & Match Service (previously known as BMDW) is the best tool in the world for obtaining an overview of whether an unrelated stem cell source exists for a patient in need of a stem cell transplant.

The service is easy to use, and trained Search Coordinators can perform the search quickly.

With a click of the mouse, 42 millions donors can be searched to find the donor that is the best match for a patient.

However, not every patient will find a matching donor. Why? Patients and Donors are matched according to their HLA type. HLA types are inherited so siblings can sometimes be a match for each other. Each of your brothers and sisters who has the same mother and father as you has a 1 in 4 chance (25%) of being a complete, or full, match. You’re more likely to match someone with a similar ethnic background or ancestry.

WMDA's Search & Match Service includes voluntary blood stem cell donors from 57 countries, though globally there are 195 countries. This means that more than 70% of countries are not represented in the global database. 

This is something that the WMDA community work on changing. We work with healthcare professionals in countries not yet represented and continue working on diversifying the global database. 

Could you support WMDA in diversifying the global database?