Leukemia, Lymphoma, and Bone Marrow Donors

imagesEvery year, there are approximately 50,000 new cases of leukemia in the U.S.  When someone has Leukemia or Lymphoma—or other diseases for which a bone marrow or umbilical cord blood transplant from a donor may be their best hope of a cure—one question is “Will there be a match?”

It can be difficult finding donors, and within some ethnic groups, the search is even harder.

While Caucasians can expect a 93 percent chance of a match, the odds fall off steeply for others: 73 percent for Asian-Americans; 72 percent for Latinos and 66 percent for African-Americans, according to the national Be the Match registry. 

Listen To The 2/15/16 Show Now:

https://kpfa.org/player/?audio=224195
 Tune in to “About Health” on KPFA.org, 94.1 FM,  2-3 pm on Mondays.  Call us with your questions at: 510-848-4425 or toll free 1-800-958-9008.
 My guests were:
Carol Gillespie, has been the Executive Director of the Asian American Donor Program (AADP) http://www.aadp.org, since 2002.  She is one of the original members of the Board of Directors for the AADP when it was founded in 1989.  She volunteered for AADP for 3 years before accepting the position as Project Administrator in 1992.  In 2002, she was selected as AADP’s Executive Director.
Dr Willis Navarro is a Board-certified hematologist and oncologist specializing in adult bone marrow transplants and hematologic malignancies including the treatment of leukemias, multiple myeloma, lymphoma, and myelodysplastic syndrome. He is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at UCSF. He has published numerous papers in the field of marrow transplant and hematologic malignancies. 
Dr. Navarro earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry at Brown University and earned a medical degree at the University of California, San Francisco. He completed an internal medicine residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital as well as a Hematology-Oncology fellowship at UCSF Medical Center.

 

 

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