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‘Our chance to help one of our own’
SAN LUIS, Arizona - Mar 4, 2005 —At 9 a.m. Thursday 40 people who wanted to be a bone marrow match for San Luis firefighter Isidro Lopez waited to have their blood drawn at the Fernando Padilla Community Center, while at Yuma Fire Station No. 2, organizers handed out playing cards to keep track of the many donors.
By 7 p.m., about 600 people had turned out to donate, and approximately 500 samples had been drawn, according to Yuma Fire Department Battalion chief Hank Green.
Many of the donors had never met Lopez and simply wanted to help. San Luis Police Chief Frank Estrada said "everybody from the city has come. It's amazing that people come in to help out."
Lopez, a father of eight, has aplastic anemia, and will die if a bone marrow match isn't found. Drives to find a match for Lopez were held in San Luis and Yuma.
National Marrow Donor Program Recruitment Specialist Oscar Correa, whose organization was in charge of the event along with the local fire departments, said it will take four to five weeks to find out if Thursday's drive was successful.But he said "we could find a match tomorrow because we add people to the registry all the time. We add about 30,000 people a month to the registry and any one of those people could be a match."
Caucasion donors were charged a $65 fee as part of the drive because there are an abundance of Caucasion donors on the registry, but few minorities. Correa said the decision to charge Caucasians was a financial one, because there is limited funding for bone marrow testing and testing each sample costs between $400 and $500. The fee helps off-set some of the testing costs.
Ruben Prieto was one of the people waiting to donate at the community center. He has never met Lopez but he said,"I feel like I can help this person."
Participants gave a vial of blood that will analyzed by a lab in Phoenix to find a potential match for Lopez. To be a match a person has to have the same six antigens in their blood that Lopez has. People receive three blood antigens from each of their parents, and so siblings are the most common match — but Lopez's five siblings have been tested and their marrow is incompatible.
San Luis Fire Engineer Jeremy Humphrey had just given blood when he said that Lopez's disease has had a profound effect on the fire department. "It has made people realize how valuable each one of us is to the department," he said. He and Lopez had worked closely for more than five years. Humphrey said he is sure that Lopez will find a match.
Almost all employees of the fire departments gave blood to see if they could be Lopez's donor. Yuma Fire Department spokesman Steve Legros said, "We try to take care of each other." He said if a match isn't found today that the fire departments will schedule another drive.
At Station No. 2, in Yuma, Somerton/Cocopah Fire Department spokesman Robby Rodriguez said that on-duty firemen from the department came to Yuma in shifts to ensure that they could all be tested.
The fire men are also sponsoring a barbecue from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on March 10 at the San Luis Fire Department to raise funds for Lopez's medical and other expenses. Lopez has been unable to work since he was diagnosed and only part of his medical expenses are covered. The fire departments are collecting funds through the AEA Federal Credit Union.For more information, call Steve Legros at 373-4855.
Many paramedics from local fire departments went to the drive on their day off to take blood from donors. Others helped donors fill out paperwork. Rural/Metro Paramedic Barry Adams came into Yuma Fire Station No. 2, and drew blood on his day off. He said, "We save the lives of others everyday because that's what we do for a living. Now it's our chance to help one of our own."
Institute of Medicine Urges Coordination Of Cord-Blood Banks
Bloomberg News
April 15, 2005 - The government should set up a program to link and regulate the country's cord-blood banks, which store samples of blood from the umbilical cord, which is rich in the adult stem cells used to treat blood cancers and other illnesses, a report by the Institute of Medicine concluded yesterday.
Cord-blood banks were first set up in the 1980s, and more than 40 exist in the United States, according to the report. Still, there is no national system for collecting, distributing or using the cord blood, said the report by the institute, a branch of the National Academies that advises the government on biomedical policy issues.
A National Cord Blood Coordinating Center would help the transplant centers and banks communicate, ensuring that doctors would be able to search all of the donations stored in cord banks for a transplant match, according to the report. About 11,700 Americans need cell transplants each year and would be helped by a more efficient system.
"Cord blood has the potential to be an excellent resource," the report found. "By increasing both the size and quality of the cord-blood inventory, nearly 90 percent of all patients who need a transplant should be able to find" a suitable match.
Cord-blood transplants are used as an alternative to transplants of bone marrow, which are commonly performed to treat patients with leukemia, lymphoma, aplastic anemia and other blood diseases.
About half the U.S. cord-blood banks make their donations available to the public. The remaining banks store cord blood for private use by a family that is paying to have the sample stored.
The kind of stem cells that are taken from cord blood are called hematopoietic progenitor cells and are also found in bone marrow. The cells are considered "adult" cells because they are not taken from human embryos. Research with adult cells is less controversial than work with embryonic cells because it does not involve destroying days-old embryos.
The report also recommended that the government take steps to increase the number of cord-blood samples available to the general public and called for further study of whether patients who receive cells taken from cord blood fare better than people given marrow cells.
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