20 Things You Can Do Today to Make The World a Better Place

There are plenty of easy ways to help each other. (Photo: Cartoon Network)

Join the Bone Marrow Registry

Want to help cure someone’s rare blood cancer? The first step is joining the national bone marrow registry. There are thousands of people in the U.S. who suffer from diseases such as leukemia and lymphoma, who depend on bone marrow transplants to save their lives. For a patient’s body to accept the healthy cells, they must come from a donor who is a close genetic match. Large registries of unrelated potential donors are necessary becuase only 30% of patients can find a match among their own family members.

The Be the Match Reigstry is coordinated by the National Bone Marrow Donor Program, and is the world’s largest hematopoietic cell registry, listing more than 10.5 million individuals.

The process to join the registry is simple and easy. After you complete a registration form, you’ll be sent a kit in the mail. You’ll be required to do a cheek swab and send the completed kit back to the folks at the registry. They’ll type your sample, and add it to the national database. (There are some medical requirements for marrow donation, though, so make sure you check those out first.) Or you can find and register at an in-person local event in your community.

Either way, you’ll now be part of the national registry of potential bone marrow donors. They’ll only contact you if and when you come up as a match for an existing patient. But you never know when you could save a life.