When a patient is diagnosed with Leukemia a search of a compatible family member is made, if this unsuccesfull then a search of the Australian registry is made, if there are no matches found then a search of overseas registries is performed.

Finding a Bone Marrow (BM) donor for a patient relies on matching tissue types. Tissue types are very dependant on ethnic backgrounds. The Northern Caucasain Group is very well represented world wide. Statistics show that the chances of finding a donor for a NC patient is about 85%, this chance unfortunately plateaus after 1 million donors are registered, so, even if we had 100,Million donors there will always going to be a percentage of patients who won't find a compatible donor.

In contrast to the NC group, many other ethnic groups are not well represented, for example, patients with Asian, southern caucasian or middle eastern backgrounds have much less chance of finding a matched donor. Our aim is to try to encourage other ethnic groups to join so that our registry reflects the multicultural patient population.

In NSW alone more than 600 people are diagnosed with some sort of Leukemia every year, only a small percentage of these people will receive a transplant from a registry donor, however all these patient will require copious amounts of blood products, that is Red Cells, Platelets and Plasma.

Platelet transfusions are required all the time, it takes between 4-6 donors to get enough platelets for 1 transfusion for 1 patient, 1 patient can need several transfusion per week or month.

This Registry has the potential to save countless amounts of lives if only people would take the time to register. If you are between the ages of 18 and 50 years old, all you have to do is go to your local Blood Bank, donate a unit of blood, 40ml of that blood is taken to determine your tissue type, this will be then put on the registry where it will be compared with the tissue types of patients who are searching for a donor. You may be asked to donate a unit of blood at the time you join the registry. If it appears that you may be a match for any of the patients in need , you will be contacted by The Australian Bone Morrow Donor Registry for further testing. Special counselors will provide you with detailed information about the bone morrow donation process. Each year police from all over Australia take part in the annual "Bluey Day" fundraising event to show support for the kids suffering from Leukemia. One third of patients in need of a transplant will die before a matched donor is found, this could be you, a relative or a close friend that becomes a statistic of this one third. Only 1 in 1000 donors are compatible with a patient in need of a transplant. There is a great need for donors with a mixed ethnic background, currently there is only about 1% out of all the donors registered in NSW that do not have an Anglo-Saxon background.

Blood donors can help by taking that extra step and registering with the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry. The number of people diagnosed with some sort of Leukemia is increasing at around 5% each year.

Being a donor might make you a bit uncomfortable and sore for a few days but think of what you can achieve by donating Bone Morrow, it might be your own child or a relatives life that you save, or it could be a complete stranger that receives the gift of life from you.