One of every three altruistic donors of bone marrow in Spain is Madrid.

-Only three of every 10 patients who need a marrow donation have a compatible relative

Madrid, January of 2013- the center of Transfusion of the Ministry of health of the community of Madrid has launched a bone marrow donation Plan with the aim of promoting the altruistic donation of bone marrow and register mACE of 3,400 new donors each year over the next four years. This has initiated a campaign of information, promotion and recruitment of new donors among the citizens of the region.

Currently the Transfusion of the Community Center has registered 13,000 altruistic donor’s marrow, representing 13% of the national total. However, for patients in the year 2011 effective donations have meant 38% of all donors in Spain, more than one third of the total of those. The specific objective of 3,438 new donors in Madrid is part of the overall objective of the Ministry of health, social services and equality of reaching 200,000 new donors in all Spain over the next four years.

Register as altruistic marrow donor requires only the conditions of health and age appropriate, answer a questionnaire and do a blood test to study its blood – antigenic – properties and compatibility with potential recipients. From that moment, the citizen registers as potential donor, whose profile of compatibility is included in a national and international database, and which can be accessed from any country where transplants are performed.

The possibility of an international search for donor allows to Spanish patients and those of the rest of the world having the maximum chances of finding a compatible donor. Currently there are about 21 million bone marrow donors registered in the global registry.

Having altruistic marrow donors is essential to perform transplants of parent therapy, hematopoietic – bone marrow – which applies face several serious pathologies such as leukemias, lymphomas and other haematological and onco-hematological diseases. The community of Madrid has 19 hospitals where such treatment, carried out around 500 marrow transplants a year are performed.

Bloodless and simple donation process

Currently the donation of hematopoietic, what is known as marrow donation, can be carried out through an extraction of blood requires some preparation of the donor, which uses a specific equipment, but that resembles a blood donation andTherefore, does not require the donor’s complexity of the donation from the bone marrow.

To achieve this objective, the Transfusion Centre has provided, along with promotion of donor campaigns, tripling the current activity in the recording and study of compatibility of donors with potential recipients. The population that may be included as a donor must be between 18 and 55 years of age, and with good state of health. By best clinical results of transplantation and the chances of effective donation, an age is internationally recommended not exceeding 45 years for his inclusion in the registry, and this age group of community campaign focuses.

All persons interested in registering as donors must be informed in depth. Although donors can unsubscribe voluntarily you should know that the donation could be done even up to 59 years of age, which is the legal age, and that on average the donations carried out 10 years after the initial registration, with what level of information and result in decision making must be as high as possible.

The specific actions of the marrow donation plan are structured in three basic lines. The first is the information to the citizen on hematopoietic bone marrow donation and blood peripheral. For this reason the website of the community of Madrid at www.madrid.org/donarsangre offers complete documentation about marrow donation, and email donarmedula@salud.madrid.org for any inquiry of the citizen has been enabled.

Collaboration with different institutions to promote the donation also information points will be established with leaflets about donation in the community hospitals and other public service facilities, as well as URNs in which citizens can deposit their data for a subsequent telephone or personal interview with the Transfusion Centre confidentially.

The information campaign through the collaboration of different institutions such as municipalities, associations of patients and relatives and private entities will be extended. They will join you seminars of information on organ donation and transplantation of hematopoietic between different groups, starting with the universities.

The second line of action is aimed at improving the knowledge of healthcare professionals about bone marrow donation and transplantation through specific courses indications. The third and last line of action is to increase the ability of the analytical determinations of the samples from donors who register.