Someone you may know is diagnosed with some

form of cancer everyday. Every five minutes

someone new is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, such as leukemia or lymphoma. Every ten minutes someone dies.

As people of color we need to educate ourselves about bone marrow and blood stem cell transplants. There is a critical need for more ethnically diverse donors to help the many patients searching the
National Marrow Donor Program, (NMDP) Registry.

Each year thousands of people develop life-threatening blood diseases that are treatable with bone marrow or blood stem cell transplants. People of color currently represent less then one-fourth of the volunteer donors on the NMDP.

Because tissue types are inherited, patients are more likely to find a match within their own racial or ethnic groups. There is a special need for people of color to become volunteer donors; our heritage tends to be the most diverse, every new potential donor could represent a unique tissue type. When a person's blood stem cells become diseased or cancerous, it is a life-threatening situation. Often the only hope for treatment is a blood stem cell transplant, which replaces the patient's diseased cells, with healthy new cells. These new cells, however, must match the patient's cells as close as possible. Becoming a committed donor can give a patient a chance at life.

The goal of the Tamar Renee Bolt Memorial Fund Inc. is to educate people of color about the importance of the bone marrow and stem cell donation process and how we all can make a difference by joining the National Marrow Donor Program (Registry).