LANGLEY AIR FORCE BASE, Va. –
Annually, doctors diagnose more than 10,000 patients in the United States with life-threatening diseases, such as leukemia, lymphoma or aplastic anemia, for which marrow transplants may be their only hope of a cure; of those, about 70 percent do not have a matching donor in their family.
Fortunately, Joint Base Langley-Eustis is answering the call to save lives by hosting dual marrow donor registration drives May 12 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the Langley Community Center and at the 1st Battalion, 222d Aviation Regiment classroom, building 1024 at Fort Eustis.
The registration drives enroll eligible donors into the C.W. Bill Young Department of Defense Marrow Donor Program, established to recruit volunteer marrow donors from active-duty military, immediate family members, civil service employees, Coast Guardsmen, National Guardsmen, Reservists and retirees. The military is the nation's largest organizational source of whole blood donations, and military members more so than any other organization meet the health and age requirements of the Department of Defense National Marrow Donor Program.
According to Maj. Clarence Gagni, USAF Hospital Langley Lab officer in charge, eligible volunteers include the aforementioned ages 18 to 60 in good health. Marrow drive volunteers will collect four buccal or cheek swabs from volunteers and send them to the Program laboratory in Washington, D.C., to determine the donor's Human Leukocyte Antigen, or HLA type. Finally, the coded information is placed on the national registry of the National Marrow Donor Program.
The program will request additional samples from donors identified as preliminary matches. Determining the most compatible donor could take between three and 12 weeks. If found as an acceptable match, individuals will be asked to consider donating in one of the donation centers: Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., the University of Maryland Greenbaum Medical Center in Baltimore, Md., or at Fairfax Pathology Associates in Fairfax, Va.
The DoD covers all HLA typing costs and the receiving patient covers all testing and medical fees and travel expenses for the marrow donor and their escort.
For more information about the marrow donor registration drives, call Major Gagni at 764-9534; Capt. Wesley Butts at 225-2114; Ch. (Capt.) Michael Hayhurst at 764-7847; Sgt. 1st Class Jennifer Williams at 878-3142 ext. 6085; or Sgt. 1st Class Torres Bultron at 878-3835.