Considering what a life saving gift bone marrow is, the process of donating marrow is really not much more than a minor inconvenience. The procedure is very safe and there are no lasting effects. Your bone marrow regenerates completely in much the same way that blood regenerates after donating blood.

Depending on the patients needs you will be asked to either donate bone marrow or peripheral blood stem cells.

• Bone marrow is collected during a day surgery procedure. The donor receives anesthesia and doctors insert a needle into the pelvic bone to aspirate the marrow.
• Peripheral Blood Stem Cells are collected by apherisis. The donor is awake throughout the process and is attached to a special machine that draws blood from the donor, separates and collects the stem cells then returns the unused portion of the blood to the donor. Prior to stem cell collection, the donor receives a special drug called Neupogen to stimulate their stem cells.

The National Marrow Donor Program has a much more detailed description of the bone marrow donation process here.

Click here to read some wonderful stories about courageous patients and their heroic bone marrow donors.


Bone marrow is located in most bones and is responsible for manufacturing blood cells. Certain diseases, such as Leukemia, cause the bone marrow to malfunction and to produce abnormal cells. For many people suffering from these diseases, a bone marrow transplant is the only hope for long term survival.

A bone marrow transplant is a procedure where a patient's own bone marrow is destroyed using high doses of chemotherapy and radiation. Normal bone marrow cells are then infused in much the same way as a blood transfusion. The healthy bone marrow can come from a variety of donors depending on the type of disease:

• The patient themselves (this is called an autologous transplant)
• A sibling or parent
• Umbilical cord blood (thanks to public cord blood banks)
• An unrelated bone marrow donor

In all cases, the donor must have the same HLA type (tissue type) as the patient. Many patients are able to find a bone marrow donor with the same HLA type, but many are not. Imagine how devastating it would be to know that your life threatening disease could be cured, if only the right person joined the bone marrow registry.

Many people think that donating bone marrow is the same as giving blood. This is not the case. There are only a handful of blood types so it is easy to find someone with the same blood type as you. In contrast, there are thousands of HLA types so it is very difficult to find a match if you need a bone marrow transplant.

In order for a patient to receive a bone marrow transplant, their donor must be of the same ethnicity. In the Canadian bone marrow registry, ethnicities other than caucasian are vastly under represented. Here are some statistics about the Canadian OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Network published in a Toronto Star article on October 2, 2006 that illustrate the pressing need for donors of various ethnicities to step forward and join the registry.

Approximately 230,000 Canadians are registered:

Ethnicity	% of Registry
Black	0.5%
Aboriginal	1%
East Indian	1.6%
Asian	3.6%
Hispanic	0.3%
Caucasian	83%

All that is needed to determine your HLA type is a simple blood test. Please join the bone marrow registry in your country today!