PATERSON, NJ --- The Paterson AM Rotary Club and Community Blood Services are participating in the Be the Match Marrowthon in hopes of registering lifesaving bone marrow donors.

The Rotary is sponsoring a drive with The HLA Registry at Community Blood Services of Paramus as part of the National Marrow Donor Program’s Be the Match Marrowthon throughout the month of June. The not-for-profit HLA Registry recruits volunteer marrow donors to help those suffering from leukemia and other deadly diseases.

The drive will take place on Saturday, June 13 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Paterson Catholic High School, 764 11th Avenue. Anyone interested in becoming a donor can call blood drive coordinator Dan Shiver of the Rotary Club at 973-449-3118 for more information or to schedule an appointment. Walk-ins are also welcome.

“Our goal is to increase the diversity on the registry,” said Shiver. According to National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) statistics, only 1.8 of the 7 million people on the NMDP’s Be the Match Registry are of ethnically or racially diverse heritages, he said.

“Ultimately, I would love to see 1% of the U.S. population, or 3 million people, signed up on the registry as lifesaving marrow donors,” Shiver said.

“If we are able to register additional donors with diverse tissue types,” Shiver said, “then the chances increase for all patients to find a match and get the lifesaving transplants they so desperately need.”

Patients like 15-year-old Amanda Salazar of Haledon who will be undergoing a stem cell transplant later this month to treat her sickle cell anemia. Or like Nobel Duran, a 37-year-old father of four from the Dominican Republic who now lives in Hackensack. Duran, who was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML), recently underwent a bone marrow transplant to save his life.

“Joining the Registry is fast and easy, and you may someday be able to save someone’s life” Shiver said, noting a consent form is filled out and then a cotton tip is used to swab the inside of a potential donor’s cheek. To register you must be between the ages of 18 and 60 and in good health, he added.

Shiver said monetary donations are also welcome to cover the $30 cost of tissue typing.

About Community Blood Services

Community Blood Services is a not-for-profit organization devoted to serving the community’s transfusion needs for more than 50 years. It provides blood and blood products to patients in dozens of hospitals in New Jersey and New York and offers a wide variety of programs and services that help save thousands of lives each year, including a bone marrow registry (The HLA Registry) and a public cord blood bank, The New Jersey Cord Blood Bank (NJCBB).