On April 2, the Asian Student Union will team up with Michigan Blood to host the Be the Match registry. The event invites students, faculty and staff to join the National Marrow Donor Program’s registry, which matches possible bone marrow donors with patients who have blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma, according to the National Marrow Donor Program.

To register, participants will provide a cheek swab, and will be contacted in the future if they are needed to donate. They will remain in the registry until their 61st birthday, unless they opt out.

A bone marrow transplant is “a life-saving treatment for people with blood cancers … and other life-threatening diseases,” according to NMDP. “First, patients undergo chemotherapy and sometimes radiation to destroy their diseased marrow. Then the donor’s healthy blood-forming cells are given directly into the patient’s bloodstream, where they can begin to function and multiply.”

The Be the Match registry is important to the ASU and other cultural organizations because of the great need for minorities in the registry, ASU President Jerika Nguyen said.

“Over 70 percent of the registry is Caucasian, so it’s difficult for minority patients to find a life-saving match, as patients are more likely to find a match in someone of their ethnic background,” Nguyen said.

She added that, as students, it’s important to start trying to represent change.

“I think it’s important to not only speak of the need for change, but also to enact it,” Nguyen said. “Of course, we as individuals have the ability to enact change throughout our lives, but college is perhaps the best time to decide what type of change that is. It’s during this time that we have an entire student body to inform, educate, inspire, and become inspired by in the same way.”

Doctors search the Be the Match registry based on their patients needs in order to find donors who are a match.

According to the NMDP, “About 1 in 540 members of the Be The Match Registry in the United States will go on to donate bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) to a patient.”

For people wary of participating, the process is simple, free and nothing to be afraid of, Nguyen said.

“The most important thing for possible participants to know is that they shouldn’t let their preconceptions of the event and process misguide them,” Nguyen said. “ It is not as scary as you might think. It is quick and painless to join. There is a 1/540 chance you’ll be asked to donate. Donating is, for the majority of the time, non-surgical. And donating never costs the donor money.”

The Be the Match registry event will be held from 8 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. on April 2 in the Kirkhof Center’s Grand River Room.

Those interested in registering can drop in any time during those hours. For more information, email [email protected] or visit asugvsu.wordpress.com/events.
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