The Biomedicine Agency has launched its new recruitment campaign for bone marrow donation. Every year, 2,000 people need a bone marrow transplant in France. In the majority of cases, diseases have bone marrow that no longer works (aplasia) or is invaded by cancer cells (leukemia).
To address this demand, more donors need to be recruited. Even if donation pledges increased in 2022 (40,000 people registered compared to 25,000 in 2021), the number of transplants is not sufficient due to a lack of diversity in donor profiles.
An essential awareness
Last year, the increase in donations might also be the consequence of the media coverage of the story of little Joseph. The three-year-old child suffers from leukemia, he is still awaiting a transplant. The Biomedicine Agency would like to maintain this level in young men. Indeed, it is with them that bone marrow donations work best because they do not have the antibodies developed by women during pregnancy. “It’s not really a question of numbers, but of diversity of profiles so that the right donor benefits the right recipient”, details the Biomedicine Agency.
And many volunteers are needed to help all patients: “If between 2 brothers or sisters of the same siblings the probability of being compatible is 1 in 4 (25%), it is only of 1 chance in 1 million between 2 individuals taken at random! … hence the difficulty in finding a compatible donor when a patient needs to be transplanted”. Last year, only 39% of registrations were made by a man, once morest only a quarter a year earlier.
