Recruiting blood donors into a local bone marrow donor registry

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Abstract
To date, most persons joining bone marrow donor registries have been recruited from platelet-pheresis panels. The potential of recruiting regular blood donors into a bone marrow donor registry (BMDR) was explored. It was found that, with minimal effort, 6.2 percent of the age-eligible blood donors were recruited. A distinguishing feature of those who joined the BMDR was a history of frequent blood donations. Although local media attention had a major impact on recruitment, even those joining as a result of the publicity usually were regular blood donors. This program has the potential to recruit nearly 8000 volunteers from 120,000 regular blood donors over an 18-month period.