GET REGISTERED & SAVE A LIFE! National Marrow Donor Program Registry Event & Blood
Drive (Corpus Christi, TX) Alvaro Andrade, 13-year-old Corpus Christi resident who enjoys music and fishing, can only wish for a bright future. Alvaro was diagnosed with leukemia in December of 1997. With your help, Driscoll Children’s Hospital patients could benefit from life-saving bone marrow transplants. Like Alvaro, over three thousand people in the world search the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) registry in hope to find a match everyday. Every month, 100 patients receive marrow transplants because of the NMDP. Many children and adults are in need of help because of a life-threatening blood diseases that require a bone marrow transplant or stem cell transplant to survive. Driscoll Children’s Hospital will be holding a registry event in conjunction with the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) on Friday, October 24 from 2 p.m. until 8 p.m. in the hospital’s auditorium. In order to boost the low number of minorities registered, the tissue-typing registry is free and open to minorities ages 18 to 60 in general health due to a grant secured by NMDP. Currently, 25.9% of those registered are minorities and people of the same race and ethnic groups are more likely to match each other. There will be 10 waivers available for non-minorities and after that the cost will be of $65 for registration. The Coastal Bend Blood Bank will also be on-hand to take blood donations. For the bone marrow registry, participants will complete a consent form and a small blood sample will be drawn for tissue typing. People of all races and backgrounds are needed to join the NMDP. Currently, there are funds available to tissue-type minorities because of the low numbers registered in the NMDP. Only 30% of those who need marrow transplants find someone within their family to match. A match is found within the same inherited genes, like eyes, skin, and hair color. If a match is not found within the family, the patient and doctor will search for a lifesaving donor on the registry. For more information on the NMDP, contact David Mott at 800-292-5534 ext. 1557 or visit www.bloodntissue.org. About Driscoll Children’s Hospital Happy 50th birthday! Since opening its doors in 1953, Driscoll Children’s
Hospital has been offering hope and healing to the children of South Texas
for half a century. The facility is a 200-bed pediatric tertiary care
center with pediatric board-certified specialists representing 19 medical
and nine surgical specialties. The facility’s referral area spans
31,000 square miles, making it larger than the state of South Carolina,
and offers care to children throughout the Coastal Bend and Rio Grande
Valley. Each year, more than 6,000 children are admitted for inpatient
care, 5,000 for day surgery and 50,000 for outpatient primary and specialty
care. The first South Texas hospital with emergency services exclusively
for children, Driscoll provides emergency care to more than 40,000 children
per year. Additionally, Driscoll maintains a state-of-the-art ground/air
transport team, 20-bed pediatric intensive care unit and 40-bed neonatal
intensive care unit, renowned pediatric intensive care program, specialized
medical outreach to the children of South Texas. # # # |
