The Need
Every year, more than 10,000 patients in the U.S. are diagnosed with life-threatening diseases such as leukemia or lymphoma, and their best or only hope of a cure is a transplant from an-unrelated adult donor or umbilical cord blood unit.
Most patients (about 70 percent) in need of a transplant do not have a matching donor in their family. In 2011, nearly half of all patients in the U.S. received the unrelated transplant* they needed. *This is referring to receiving transplants, not finding matches.
Barriers to transplant include:
- lack of access to health care (no or limited insurance coverage)
- lack of timely referral for transplant,
- decline in health status and
- inability to find a matched donor or cord blood unit.
Likelihood of a Match
More than 650,000 new potential donors joined in 2011 (down from nearly 723,000 in 2010); of those, nearly 40 percent were from diverse racial and ethnic communities.
A patient’s likelihood of having a donor on the Be The Match Registry who is willing and able to help save a life is estimated to range from 66 percent to 93 percent, depending on race or ethnicity (unchanged from 2010).
- African American or Black patients only have an estimated 66 percent likelihood of having a donor on the Be The Match Registry who is willing and able to help save a life.
- Asian or Pacific Islander patients only have an estimated 73 percent likelihood of having a donor on the Be The Match Registry who is willing and able to help save a life.
- Hispanic or Latino patients only have an estimated 72 percent likelihood of having a donor on the Be The Match Registry who is willing and able to help save a life.
- White patients have an estimated 93 percent likelihood of having a donor on the Be The Match Registry who is willing and able to help save a life.
- American Indian and Alaska Native patients have an estimated 82 percent likelihood of having a donor on the Be The Match Registry who is willing and able to help save a life.
*Cord blood plays a significant role in meeting the needs of transplant patients. Statistics on likelihood of a match including cord blood are in development and will be available at a future date. -NMDP
Composition of the Be The Match Registry by Race and Ethnicity
The Be The Match Registry provides access to 9.5 million potential donors and nearly 165,000 cord blood units. Through partnerships with international registries, the NMDP provides additional access to approximately 9 million donors and 425,000 cord blood units.
| Race/Ethnicity | Number and % Potential Adult Donors | Number and % Cord Blood Units |
| African American or Black | Nearly 685,000 7% | More than 12,000 7% |
| American Indian/Alaska Native | Nearly 106,000 1% | 265 0.2% |
| Asian | Nearly 670,000 7% | Nearly 12,000 7% |
| White | More than 6.8 million 71% | More than 100,000 61% |
| Multiple Race | More than 340,000 4% | Nearly 15,000 9% |
| Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander | Nearly 15,000 0.2% | 150 0.1% |
| Hispanic or Latino | More than 940,000 10% | More than 29,000 18% |
Donating Marrow, Peripheral Blood Stem Cells (PBSC) or Umbilical Cord Blood
A marrow or cord blood transplant replaces a patient’s unhealthy blood-forming cells with healthy ones. The cells used in transplants come from three sources: marrow, peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) and umbilical cord blood.
The above information is from the the Be The Match Registry®, operated by the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP). The information has been edited for presentation on this blog.
