At today’s press conference on the occasion of the National Day for Donation and Transplantation of Organs and Tissue, which is marked on May 26th, the Ana Rukavina Foundation and the Ministry of Health announced the new possibilities of joining the Registry of voluntary hematopoietic stem cell donors at transfusion centers in nine Croatian cities.
The Ana Rukavina Foundation was established six years ago, after Ana’s premature death, with the intention of carrying out Ana’s mission; that there would no longer be any more small bald heads, that is, to create a respectable National Registry of voluntary donors of hematopoietic stem cells and thus provide a chance to treat those suffering from acute and chronic forms of leukemia, as well as patients with severely damaged bone marrow.
At the beginning of the work of the Foundation there were a mere 150 people listed in the Registry. Today that number has increased to 39,381 potential donors. We have also established the “Ana Rukavina” Public Cord Blood Bank, which was founded on Ana’s birthday on March 28, 2007, and which stores 5,000 transplants of cord blood stem cells.
At the initiative of the Ana Rukavina Foundation, the Ministry of Health has organized the ongoing collection of blood samples for the Registry of voluntary hematopoietic stem cells at nine transfusion centers in the Republic of Croatia, and those are located in: Zagreb, Osijek, Varaždin, Slavonski Brod, Pula, Rijeka, Zadar, Split and Dubrovnik.
- Croatian Institute for Transfusion Medicine, Department for NAT Testing, Petrova 3 – Zagreb
- Clinical Hospital Osijek, Department of Transfusion Medicine, Huttlerova 4 – Osijek
- General Hospital “Dr. Josip Benčević”, Štampara 42 – Slavonski Brod
- Clinical Hospital Center Rijeka, Clinical Department of Transfusion Medicine, Krešimirova 42 – Rijeka
- General Hospital Pula, Transfusion Medicine, Negrijeva 6 – Pula
- Clinical Hospital Center Split, Spinčićeva 1 – Split
- General Hospital Zadar, Department of Transfusion Medicine, B – Peričića 5 – Zadar
- General Hospital Varaždin, I. Meštrovića bb – Varaždin
- General Hospital Dubrovnik, Roka Mišetića bb
Of course, in addition to these nine transfusion centers in nine cities, all those who are interested can still join the Registry at the Clinical Hospital Center Zagreb (Rebro), Kišpatićeva 12, at the Department of Tissue Typing (green building, basement, room 9) every working day from 8 AM to 2 PM.