Leukemia is a major killer of children within
the age group of 0-15 and a bone marrow transplant offers the only
hope of a cure for many leukemia patients. However, the odds of
matching a patient with his or her siblings are 1 in 4 and for
those without a sibling donor, the chances of finding an unrelated
match are 1 in 20,000.
Since its setup in 1993, the BMDP has some 40,000 donors in the
Register, facilitated 8,000 searches and found 125 successful
matches for patients both locally and abroad, to date.
Tissue typing is the first step towards maintaining the Registry.
The process of tissue typing is very complex and expensive.
Currently, the cost of testing each new donor is S$150 (compared to
previous cost of S$300).
As the only bone-marrow donor Register in Singapore, the BMDP is
committed to improving the chances of survival for patients with
leukemia and other blood-related diseases. Towards this end, BMDP
is targeting to expand the Registry further to 50,000 donors by
2008 so as to enhance the probability of finding a compatible match
for leukemia patients.
At 5,000 donors a year, the BMDP needs S$750,000 to fund the costs
of testing alone or approximately S$2.5 million to achieve our
target of 15,000 new donors by 2008.
