Travis to host bone marrow donation drive

TRAVIS AFB, CA, UNITED STATES

06.01.2018

Story by Airman 1st Class Christian Conrad 

60th Air Mobility Wing

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. – In keeping with their commitment to the health and quality of life of all military families, the 60th Force Support Squadron at Travis Air Force Base, California, is partnering with David Grant USAF Medical Center to host a bone marrow donation drive June 4 and 6 at various locations on Travis.
The donation is a three-step process, but donors who volunteer for the drive will only need to participate in the initial step, consisting of filling out a questionnaire and submitting a saliva sample to on-site medical professionals.
From there, donors will be contacted for a phone survey at which point they’ll have the opportunity to add their name to a national registry of blood marrow donors. Only after having blood work done to verify their status as a healthy donor will they be eligible to match with patients needing a bone marrow transplant.
“Sometimes, the time between being placed on the registry and actually being matched to someone can take years,” said Capt. Pricilla Rodriguez, 60th FSS military personnel flight commander. “I’ve been on the registry for 12 years and haven’t made it to phase three where you actually match with someone and have your bone marrow collected. Even so, it’s important for there to be an ample pool of donors that hospitals can draw from.”
According to Salute to Life’s website, an organization that supports Department of Defense bone marrow donation programs, 30,000 people a year are diagnosed with a fatal blood disease. Of those 30,000, some are successfully treated through conventional therapy such as chemotherapy, blood transfusions and medication, while others need bone marrow or stem cell transplants.
Bone marrow donations are so scarce, though, that patients needing organ transplants are often helped quicker than those needing bone marrow transplants.
Since bone marrow types are hereditary, the best chance some patients have at receiving a compatible transplant is to either receive one from a relative or someone from a similar cultural, ethnic or genetic background.
It’s because of this that some minority populations are at a higher risk of death due to blood diseases, said Rodriguez.
“Minorities are hugely underrepresented in respect to the bone marrow donor pool,” she said. “As a corporation, the DoD is a large and diverse group of people. It’s programs like the ones sponsored by Salute to Life that wish to reverse that trend, and that won’t happen without people who are willing to come out and be involved in the welfare of other people.”
In addition to walk-ins during the times set by the bone marrow drive, individuals can also register to be donors when they give blood. Not only that, but having tattoos, body piercings, malaria shots, the human papillomavirus, tuberculosis, living overseas during an outbreak of mad cow disease, being deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq or even having the common cold does not disqualify you from donating bone marrow.
“People often tell me that bone marrow donation seems scary,” said Rodriguez. “And to those people, I ask this: Do you have kids? Leukemia is the number one child killer of the world. My brother was diagnosed at nine with Leukemia. At 10, he needed a bone marrow donor. At 11, he died because he didn’t have one.”
“It’s easy to overlook the good we do when it has the potential to affect such a great amount of people; it makes the work we do feel impersonal. It’s because of that fact, though, that what we do is so important. Take ownership of the lives you have the potential to save—it means the world to those people.”
Below are the dates, time and locations of the bone marrow drives:
June 4 – 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. at the Travis Fitness Center.
June 4 – 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Travis Fitness Center.
June 6 – 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. inside DGMC’s shopette.
June 6 – 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in front of the Base Exchange.
June 6 – 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. inside DGMC’s shopette.
For additional information on bone marrow donations, locations of drives near you or to request an at-home registry kit, visit www.salutetolife.org.

• Date Taken: 06.01.2018
• Date Posted: 06.07.2018 17:14
• Story ID: 280050
• Location: TRAVIS AFB, CA, US