HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — You could be someone's cure for cancer. That's the message from a Tampa Bay retailer doing its part to get people signed up for theNational Bone Marrow Registry.
Valhalla Resale teamed up withDKMS, a world-known bone marrow donor center, to get more donors on the list.
The shop held a donor sign-up event at its Tampa location on Thursday and at its St. Petersburg location on Friday.
According to DKMS, an American is diagnosed with blood cancer every three minutes. Unfortunately, over 50,000 people die yearly from blood cancer in the U.S. Blood cancer is a malignancy that attacks the blood, bone marrow, or lymphatic system.
The three types of blood cancer are leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma. When conventional treatments such as chemotherapy don't work, a stem cell transplant may be a potential treatment. DKMS has recruited over 10,600,000 globally.
Every day, at least 20 donors give patients a second chance at life.
DKMS states that having as many people as possible on the universal donor list is essential.
According to DKMS, around 70% of patients do not find a matching donor within their family.
Danielle Ferrari, the owner of Valhalla, wanted to do her part to help recruit donors.
During their last donation drive in 2019, she was excited to learn one of the people who signed up at her shop went on to match with a patient.
"It was really exciting," Ferrari said. "It is a one in 400 chance that you'll go on to donate... so it was really validating that we do these drives and really exciting to help facilitate someone to have their cure."
Ferrari said it's easy to become a bone marrow donor.
The registration process takes about four minutes and involves filling out a form and a cheek swab.
Anyone in good general health between the ages of 18-55 can register. While there is no charge to register, it costs DKMS $65 to process each registration form and sample.
Donations are helpful but not required.
All DKMS donors are entered into the National Marrow Donor Program database. So if you have already registered with another nonprofit organization, such as Be The Match, there is no need to re-register.
