Gift of Life Campaign seeks volunteers for donor registry > Effort benefits those needing bone-marrow transplants

ELLSWORTH — A prick of the needle and some blood is drawn. Weeks or even years later, a life may be saved.

The more willing arms that are extended for that nearly painless blood test, the greater the possibility that the life of a person suffering from a fatal blood disease can be saved through a bone-marrow transplant.

Rosie Clark, a founding member of the Mount Desert Island Gift of Life Campaign, hopes nearly 200 people will extend their arms and hearts next month for the organization’s second campaign to enlist volunteers to the National Marrow Donor Registry.

The local Gift of Life campaign, scheduled for 4-8 p.m. Tuesday, June 16, at Ellsworth City Hall, will send blood samples from the willing donors to the national coordinating center in Minneapolis.

At the center, the samples will be entered into a national and international registry to establish possible matches between donors and the growing list of patients in need of bone marrow transplants.

“A lot of people want to do what they can for other people,” Clark said recently, adding that more than 100 people had rolled up their sleeves for the test last year.

The campaign last May was the first of its kind north of Portland, with people traveling from as far away as Fort Kent for the blood test.

The local campaign is part of the international effort to find non-related bone marrow donors for the thousands of children and adults stricken with leukemia, aplastic anemia or other blood diseases. Each year an additional 16,000 people in the United States become ill with one of the diseases.

It is usually only after other grueling treatments have been tried and failed that a bone marrow transplant seems the only recourse. For 70 percent of those patients, a suitable bone marrow donor cannot be found within their own families.

Clark compares the search for a compatible donor to “looking for a needle in a haystack.”

According to information from the national registry, the chances of finding a match may range from one in 100 to one in 1 million, depending on how common a patient’s human leukocyte antigens are. Those chances vary within racial groups, with the chances of finding a match about one in 20,000 for Caucasian patients.

Since the national program began in 1987, about 500,000 people in the United States have volunteered to be donors. About 30 percent, or about 1,000, of the patients referred for a bone marrow transplant have been able to find matches by searching the national registry, with half of those people under age 25.

Clark and another Mount Desert Island resident, Anne Chappe, brought the program to Hancock County in 1991. Chappe’s brother was waiting at that time for a bone marrow transplant in British Columbia.

Even though Chappe was not a suitable donor for her brother, she started the local program hoping it could help others. Since that first year, her brother has received a marrow transplant through a similar campaign conducted in the mid-West.

The MDI group hopes a successful match can be found this year for a Machias man who has suffered for several years with leukemia and continues to look for suitable bone-marrow donor.

The first blood test a donor undergoes can only indicate possible compatibility with a patient waiting for a transplant, Clark explained. Additional blood tests would be needed to verify any potential match.

Once those tests have been completed, the donor would be hospitalized overnight, probably at a Boston hospital. All costs of that procedure would be paid for through the recipient’s insurance.

Under general or spinal anesthesia, surgeons take about 10 percent of the donor’s marrow from the pelvic region. Any discomfort from that procedure has been compared to a sore hip from falling on the ice, with soreness lasting about 10 days. Also within those 10 days, the donor’s bone marrow would completely replenish itself.

For the recipient, the bone-marrow transplant is costly, ranging from $150,000 to $300,000. However the success rate can range between 30 and 80 percent for the recipient, depending on the patient’s age, condition and the progress of the disease.

Donations of money are also needed to ensure the success of the campaign. Each time a person volunteers as a donor, the local group must pay $45 for the blood test although persons in the military can be tested for free. Last year, about $3,500 was raised for the blood tests. This year, the group has raised $1,000, with more money needed.

Persons wanting to donate can send funds to the MDI Gift of Life Campaign, P.O. Box 572, Mount Desert, 04660. Those planning to give blood on June 16 should first contact Rosie Clark at 244-7159 or Anne Chappe at 288-4974. Blood donors must be between the ages of 18 and 55.