This is Nina. She is a mom. She is Asian-American. And she is dying. She has stage 4 lymphoma that has spread to her brain and her only hope of living is to find a bone marrow donor...in less than a month. The problem is that Asian and Pacific Islanders are among the lowest numbers of bone marrow donors in the National Registry. Of the 9 million potential donors registered with the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP), only 7% are Asian. Even fewer (4%) are mixed race.
How can you help? Share this with your friends and family. If they don't fit this donor profile themselves, surely they know someone who might. It's worth a shot. You can also help by getting typed at a recruitment center: http://bethematch.org/Join/Join_in_Person/Recruitment_Centers.aspx.
A quick cheek swab, a few minutes of your time, and you will find out if you are eligible to save not only Nina, but anyone suffering from blood cancers. I joined the registry in 1997 right before my African-American supervisor died of leukemia. African-Americans also make up only 7% of the NMDP.
Every year, 12000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with life-threatening diseases like leukemia or lymphoma, for which a marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant from an unrelated donor may be their best or only hope of a cure. About 70% do not have a matching donor in their family and depend on finding a match with the NMDP.
To learn more about Nina's journey, please visit http://savenina.com/. To help efforts to increase and diversify the donor pool, please visit http://www.a3mhope.org/ or http://www.swabplusdna.org/.
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