HAMILTON – Cold weather may have prevented some potential donors from attending Tuesday’s Bone Marrow Donor Drive at Colgate University. With only 10 people registering with the National Marrow Donor Program, Colgate is still reaching out to people in an attempt to reach more potential donors.
With temperatures on Tuesday that felt like 25 degrees below zero with the wind chill, and snow drifting across main roads in many places, Colgate fell short of its original goal, which was 25 to 30 new registered donors. According to the director of the bone marrow drive Cassie Quirindongo, only 10 people made the trip to Colgate’s Alana Cultural Center during the five-hour event on Tuesday. “We’re trying to get more people of color in the registry,” Quirindongo said.
Bone marrow donations are used to treat many forms of leukemia, lymphoma and other forms of potentially life threatening blood diseases. Registering to be a donor is a relatively easy process. Applicants fill out a form consisting of health questions and contact information. To match potential donors with patients, donors are asked to swab four areas of their mouth, for 10 seconds each. The mouth swabs are labeled, and will be examined for tissue typing purposes to match the donors to the patients who need them. Donors who register online are generally charged a $52 fee for tissue typing costs, but at Colgate’s event, no fee was charged.
In an attempt to get more people registered, Colgate will continue its no-fee drive, through telephone contact with Michael Brooks an associate from the National Bone Marrow Donor Registry. Interested applicants can contact Brooks directly, and receive the questionnaire and mouth swab kit via mail. For more information, contact Quirindongo at (315) 228-7156.
All names on the registry are confidential. Registrants can decide whether or not they would like to donate after they are matched, but only serious donors should register.