National Marrow Donor Program

Are you familiar with the Be the Match Registry? Read the following information and think about joining. You might just save a life.

Be The Match Registry® is the new name for the registry operated by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). They've been helping patients receive the transplants they need for more than 20 years.

Now, medical advances are making transplants available to more patients of all ages than ever before.

Be The Match was introduced in 2009 to meet this need by engaging a growing community of people inspired and committed to help patients in any way they can — by joining the registry, donating umbilical cord blood, contributing financially or getting involved.

Be The Match offers people the unique opportunity to help a patient by donating bone marrow or umbilical cord blood. Thousands of patients with leukemia and other life-threatening diseases depend on the Be The Match Registry to find a match.

A patient's doctor can contact the NMDP to search the Be The Match Registry and other registries worldwide to access more than 13 million donors and 400,000 umbilical cord blood units.

Maybe you can help Devan. Devan is an adorable little 4-year old boy with a rare form of leukemia who in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant. His doctors have less than 12 weeks to find a match for Devan. You can read about Devan at
http://www.matchdevan.com.

If you are interested in registering, go to the Be the Match web site to see if you qualify. You will be asked to make a donation to help defray the cost of the test kit, but you are not obligated to do so.