Facing Need for Black Bone Marrow Donors

{snip}

Since becoming diagnosed [with aplastic anemia], [Johnika] Carter-Kiel, now 19, has been searching for a bone marrow donor who could cure her. A match will probably share her African American heritage. But the odds are slim. About 7 percent of the nation’s 10 million registered potential bone-marrow donors are black, compared with 75 percent who are white.

In an attempt to correct that shortage, the National Marrow Donor Program is starting a nationwide awareness campaign this summer.

On behalf of the organization, Carter-Kiel spoke Sunday in San Francisco’s Moscone Center as part of the biennial conference of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the nation’s first Greek-letter sorority for African American college women.

{snip}

Many African Americans are reluctant to donate bone marrow because they fear the process, even though they can donate peripheral blood stem cells non-surgically, and they distrust the health care system, said Myrada Benjamin, an account executive and a community recruiter for the National Marrow Donor Program.

“Here we live in an extremely diverse area with a ton of people of color,” she said, “and we’re dying.”

{snip}