Diverse donors need it to Save Lives (Miami)

Blood Cancer Hits Diverse Communities Harder
• 75% of Black and Multi-Racial blood cancer patients never find
a lifesaving donor and will not survive.
• Blacks are twice as likely as Caucasians to be diagnosed with
and die from multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood plasma.1
• 55% of Hispanic and Latino blood cancer patients never find a
lifesaving donor and will not survive.
• Hispanic children and adolescents have higher rates of leukemia
than all other racial and ethnic groups in the United States. They
also have lower leukemia survival rates than non-Hispanic white
children.2
• Hispanic men and women have the second-highest rates of
lymphoma, after non-Hispanic whites.3
• Hispanic men and women have the highest rates of developing
acute lymphocytic leukemia.3
• The difficulty of finding matching marrow donors is due to the
low numbers of Blacks, Hispanics and Multi-Racial individuals in
the registry.

About Donors
The most requested donors are between 18 and 25 years old, as younger donors are healthier and produce more of the bone marrow and stem cells needed for transplant. Males are often requested over females, as
due to their larger physical size, they produce greater numbers of stem cells. Females may not donate while pregnant or nursing, due to
changes in the immune system that can result in medical complications for the recipient. Many people think marrow donation is painful, but that’s not true! More than 80% of donations are peripheral stem cells that are in the blood, collected in the same way as donating blood platelets. Less than 20% of donations collect bone marrow from the
hip, most often for donation to a child, while you are under general anesthesia. Both are outpatient procedures, and nearly every donor
tells us the process was much easier than they expected.
For more information please contact:
Joe Baldelomar email: Protected content phone: Protected content