Airmen at Yokota host DoD bone marrow drive

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Stacy Moless
  • 374th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan --  Each year, an estimated 30,000 Americans will be diagnosed with a serious blood disease and more than 500 of them are in the Department of Defense. For many of these people, a bone marrow transplant is all that will save them and 75 percent of patients cannot find a match within their own family.

To help battle these diseases, the DoD established its own marrow donor program and also joined with the National Marrow Donor Registry.

Recently, Tech. Sgt. Joseph Brockman and Cheryl Brockman organized a bone marrow drive on Yokota Air Base, Japan.

"Registering to donate bone marrow is so important because of both the scarcity of available and willing donors, and the seriousness of the diseases that can be treated through bone marrow donations," said Cheryl Brockman, organizer for the bone marrow drive at Yokota.

The drive began after the couple went to update their contact information on the website and realized they could organize a drive themselves. They registered as donors many years ago after a fellow Airmen, and close friend, died of leukemia waiting for a donor.

"Too many people die while waiting to find a suitable donor," said Tech. Sgt. Brockman Superintendent of readiness emergency management, 374th Civil Engineering Squadron "It is such a low-risk and selfless opportunity to save someone's life."

It is important to at least consider registering sooner rather than later because by the time a person finds out that a friend or loved one needs help it may already be too late, said Brockman.

Registering as a donor is quick and easy, requiring no blood samples. Registrants fill out a consent form then swab the inside of their mouth to provide cells for testing. Potential donors remain in the registry until age 60 and are contacted if they ever become a preliminary match for a patient.

Yokota was able to add more than 660 new donors to the registry during the five-day collection drive. The drive also helped raise awareness to the cause and worked to dispel myths surrounding bone marrow donations.

"People were afraid to register because they were afraid of needles or had heard wild rumors about how extremely painful it was to be a donor," said Tech. Sgt Brockman. "It was critical that we did what we could to educate people and raise awareness. We had to change the hearts of people who were more concerned about a needle than the chance of saving a person."

Advances in medical technology have made the process of bone marrow collection significantly easier and drastically less painful. Most of donations are now through a method called peripheral blood stem cell donation, which harvests the stem cells from the donor's blood and not directly from the bone itself. Only in small cases is marrow extracted from the bone; this is often to help sick children as they experience a higher success rate from marrow transplants as opposed to blood stem cells. For marrow donation, local or general anesthesia is used so there is no pain when the marrow is collected.

"Every individual registered is a potential life saved," said Cheryl Brockman."That is an incredibly rewarding thought."

For more information on bone marrow donations please visit http://www.dodmarrow.org/index.htm