Wayne SDA Bone Marrow Drive
Supports Patients in Need

Saturday, March 1, 2014

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WAYNE, NJ - The Seventh Day Adventist Church is hosting a bone marrow registry drive this Saturday, March 1.

Friends and family of patients like Barry Hyman, an SDA member who was recently diagnosed with a life-threatening blood cancer, are urging community members to register at the Seventh Day Adventist Church, 218 Ratzer Road in Wayne from 1 to 4 p.m. in hopes of finding matches to cure Barry and thousands of other patients. Registration for anyone age 18 to 44 is free, painless and easy - a simple swab is taken from the inner cheek.

If you can�t register but wish to help in another way, you can help fund the family�s efforts by sending in a contribution to help defer the cost of adding new members to the registry. A check can be made out to the Be The Match registry to The HLA Registry, 102 Chestnut Ridge Road, Montvale, NJ 07645. Every $100 raised helps add a member to the registry.

Every day, thousands of adults and children like Barry are diagnosed with aplastic anemia, leukemia, lymphoma, sickle cell anemia and other serious diseases that require stem cell transplants as a cure. Like Barry, 70 percent of those patients will not find matches within their own families and must turn to the national registry to find a donor match.

ABOUT THE HLA REGISTRY
The HLA Registry (HLA stands for human leukocyte antigens, the genetic information encoded on white blood cells) at Community Blood Services is a member of the National Marrow Donor Program�s (NMDP) Be The Match Registry. The registry is dedicated to finding compatible unrelated donors for lifesaving bone marrow transplants. A member of the NMDP based in Montvale (NJ), it is the largest non-governmental donor center in the U.S. and has registered more than 230,000 potential donors in the NMDP�s data base.