World Marrow Donor Day

Dear friends, September 19th is World Marrow Donor Day. This day has been celebrated every third Saturday in September since 2015 to remind the importance of enrolling in the registers of voluntary hematopoietic stem cell donors, donating umbilical cord blood stem cells, and thanking all the wonderful people who took the time to donate a part of themselves to the sick to save their lives.
To motivate and remind you of the importance of donating hematopoietic stem cells, either by donating bone marrow or peripheral stem cells or by donating umbilical cord blood stem cells to the Public Cord Blood Bank Ana Rukavina, you can read World Marrow Donor Association, the Croatian Bone Marrow Donor Registry and the Ana Rukavina Foundation statistics below:
• The World Registry, of which the Croatian Registry is a member, today has a total of 37,955,975 potential donors of hematopoietic stem cells (37,156,127 potential donors and 799,848 doses of umbilical cord blood).
• 65,112 number of potential donors registered in the Croatian Registry (62,424 HLA typed samples).
• 3,614 donated doses of umbilical cord blood to the Public Cord Blood Bank Ana Rukavina, which were typed and entered in the World Registry.
• In 2019, according to the World Registry, 23,181 unrelated hematopoietic stem cell transplants were performed (this figure includes bone marrow transplants, peripheral stem cells, and umbilical cord blood stem cells).
• From 1997 to 2019, more than 311 thousand unrelated hematopoietic stem cell transplants were performed (this figure includes bone marrow transplants, peripheral stem cells, and umbilical cord blood stem cells).
• Since 2009, when the first unrelated transplant from the Croatian Registry was performed, to date, 123 transplants from the Croatian Registry have been performed (85 for patients from Croatia and 38 for patients from abroad).
• Out of a total of 123 transplants, 5 were from donated umbilical cord blood doses to the Public Cord Blood Bank Ana Rukavina (1 umbilical cord blood dose was transplanted for a sick person in Croatia, and 4 for sick people from abroad)
• In 2020, 6 hematopoietic stem cell transplants were performed by donors from the Croatian Registry, and all 6 transplants were donated to sick persons from Croatia
123 thanks to the noble hematopoietic stem cell donors from the Croatian Bone Marrow Donor Registry. Thank you for giving a part of yourself to save strangers to whom your selfless act has given hope of healing.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts from all of us from the Ana Rukavina Foundation and sincere congratulations to the donors on the occasion of World Marrow Donor Day!