Bone Marrow Registry Drive Exceeds Goal

Above, Westminster students helped register donors during the campus’s bone marrow registry drive in March 2015.

In March, a 3-day drive to educate the Westminster community about how easy it is to save a life as a bone marrow donor exceeded the organizers’ expectations. Dr. Bob Hansen’s Westminster Seminar, the Westminster Service Corps and Delta Tau Delta sponsored the event and set a goal to register 100 donors to the bone marrow registry. The group surpassed that number by reaching 150.

Six out of 10 patients in need of bone marrow transplants are unable to find a donor, and 99.99 percent of bone marrow donors say they’d jump at the chance to donate and save a life again. The most common donation method is through stem cells filtered through a blood donation, a non-intrusive procedure, no more painful than simply giving blood.

 A special thanks to the following students who coordinated the drive:

• Kaitlin Rosholm
• Ella Leslie
• Kyrin Lewis
• Fathimath Shafa
• Morgan Henry
• Spencer O’Hara
• Jessie Edwards
• Odunayo Oyesanya
• And special thanks to our Westminster Fellow for Community Engagement, Kari Lenz ’14

Missed the drive on campus but want to help? Register online at deletebloodcancer.org. Westminster plans to help the Fulton/Callaway community and Rotary sponsor a community donor drive next year.

In summer 2014, Hansen’s 31-year-old son Matt was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Last October, Matt’s treatment included chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant from an anonymous donor. More on Westminster’s March 2015 bone marrow drive.

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