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DKMS Americas

Type	Non-profit
Headquarters	New York, NY, USA
Key people	Katharina Harf, Peter Harf
Industry	Health Care
Employees	30 (November 2009)
Website	www.dkmsamericas.org

DKMS Americas is a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization founded in 2004 and based in New York, NY that recruits volunteer bone marrow donors of all races and ethnicities to help leukemia patients in need of a bone marrow transplant. DKMS Americas was co-founded by Katharina Harf and her father Peter Harf.

[edit] What DKMS Does

DKMS Americas works to expand bone marrow donor registries by recruiting bone marrow donors from every race and ethnicity, in order to provide leukemia and other blood cancer patients in need of a bone marrow transplant with the best available donor match. DKMS continuously works at improving the quality of its database of donors to ensure donors are available and accessible when they are needed most. Each donor receives a DKMS ID card confirming their registration and commitment.

DKMS also coordinates the transport of bone marrow and blood stem cells from Germany to the U.S. for patients here in need of bone marrow transplants.

Through its efforts, DKMS Americas has registered over 120,000 donors, and more than 125 DKMS (Americas) donors have gone on to donate their bone marrow. Currently, only 3 out of 10 people will receive a life-saving transplant. Therefore, there is still a great need to continue to register more bone marrow donors to grow the national registry of donors in order to increase the chance of patients finding a suitable donor match.

[edit] History

In 1990, Peter Harf was desperate to find a donor for his wife Mechtild, who had acute leukemia. The search seemed hopeless because, at the time, there were only 3,000 unrelated donors available in Germany. He gathered friends, family and volunteers to initiate donor drives, successfully recruiting some 68,000 donors in one year.

DKMS or "Deutsche Knochenmarkspenderdatei" (German Bone Marrow Donor Center in English) was officially founded in May 1991 by Peter Harf and his wife's physician, Professor Gerhard Ehninger. Their goal was simple: to build the world's largest bone marrow donor center to help more patients in need.

DKMS has facilitated more than 19,000 transplants worldwide and now counts over 2 million registered bone marrow donors making it the world's largest bone marrow donor center. DKMS donors make up more than 15% of worldwide registered donors and more than 25% of Be The Match (operated by the NMDP) registered donors.

DKMS Americas was founded in 2004 as the American offshoot of DKMS.

[edit] The Need for Donors

Thousands of patients with leukemia, blood cancers, or other fatal autoimmune diseases search for an unrelated bone marrow donor who can make their bone marrow transplant possible. Less than 30% of these patients find a suitable donor match within their family. The remaining 70% depend on unrelated individual. Many can be cured with a bone marrow transplant

Because the odds that two random individuals are HLA matched exceeds one in 20,000, the larger the pool of donors, the greater the chance a patient can find their donor match.

[edit] Finances

DKMS is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization. DKMS does not receive funding from the government and therefore relies on the generosity of the general public to help finance the $65 cost to register each new life-saving bone marrow donor. ^[1] It costs DKMS $65 to register each new bone marrow donor. The major portion of this cost is due to laboratory testing, and the remaining amount covers supplies and informational materials for the testing.

[edit] International Networks

DKMS is part of a life-saving network of organizations, including the national Be The Match Registry (operated by the NMDP). DKMS is an accredited bone marrow donor center with the Be the Match Registry. DKMS donors make up more than 25% (over 2 million donors) of the national registry. Another international connection is the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA), which helps to bring together donors and patients, regardless of location. Throughout the world, there are more than 13.5 million bone marrow donors registered.

[edit] External links

• DKMS Americas - official web site of DKMS Americas
• DKMS - official web site of DKMS Germany

[edit] References

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (November 2009)

1. ^ http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/200g-needed-after-response-to-bone-marrow-request-1.1630227