Residents urged
to visit marrow drive

Bone marrow donor registration drives will be held tomorrow and Saturday at Iolani School to try to find matches for people with fatal blood diseases, such as 3-year-old Taja Harris, who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The Hawaii Bone Marrow Donor Registry will conduct the drives from noon to 8 p.m. each day at the school's Student Center, 563 Kamoku St.

More than 16,000 people across the country need bone marrow transplants because of some type of terminal blood disease, according to the Bone Marrow Donor Registry at St. Francis Medical Center.

Hawaii bone marrow donors are important because the population is ethnically mixed, and marrow transplants require certain matching tissue traits between the donor and patient.

Taja, of Kapolei, is of Chinese, Hawaiian, Korean and Caucasian descent. Matches usually occur among people of the same ethnic background, but it is possible for donors to match patients of another ethnic group.

"One simple act can create hope for so many," said Roy Yonashiro, donor recruitment coordinator at the Hawaii Registry.

Donors must be between 18 and 60 years old and in good general health. A small blood sample is collected for tissue typing, and the donor is placed on the Hawaii and national donor registries. Donors need to register only once, but they should update their information if there are changes. This can be done at www.stfrancishawaii.org.

For more information, call 547-6154.