In the spirit of "gotong-royong," the Bone Marrow Donor Programme and MUIS are calling out to the Malays in Singapore to help their own community.
The Bone Marrow Donor Programme (BMDP) in collaboration with the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS), announced an aggressive campaign to raise awareness and recruit 3,000 Malay bone marrow donors over the next year. With less than 2,000 registered donors from the Malay community today, there is an urgent need to recruit more.
In Singapore, 2,000 patients, including members of the Malay community, are diagnosed with leukaemia or other blood related diseases every year, with many requiring a bone marrow transplant to survive. The odds of finding a matching donor outside the family is only 1 in 20,000, and most likely to be found from the same ethnic group. Today, BMDP has 48,000 volunteer donors on the register and with less than 2,000 Malay donors, this means that it is an immediate and pressing issue for members of the ethnic group to come forward and join the register.
With 8 Malay patients requiring bone marrow transplants this year, only one has successfully found a match. "The Malay community only stands to benefit by registering as bone marrow donors as the chances of a Malay patient finding a matching bone marrow donor would significantly increase," BMDP President, Jane Prior said. "We’ve set an ambitious goal to increase the size of the local register in order to ensure that each Singaporean who needs a transplant is more likely to find that life-saving match," she added.
According to BMDP Vice-President and Senior Consultant at the National University Hospital, Associate Professor Allen Yeoh, the misconception that bone marrow donation can lead to long-term medical complications is widespread among the Malay community.
"Many still think that bone marrow donation is hazardous to health," reiterated Professor Yeoh. "A donor’s bone marrow regenerates naturally within about a week after harvest and the donor only needs to stay in hospital for a day or two. All costs will be borne through the BMDP," he added.
To recruit more donors from the community into the register, mosques island-wide are providing themselves as a platform to reach out to the Malay community through weekly awareness talks and donor drives. "The only way for Malay patients to find a hope of a cure is for our community to come forward and help," said Mr Haji Abdul Mutalif Bin Hashim, Chairman, Southwest Mosque Cluster, Partner and Supporter of the BMDP-MUIS collaboration. "With mosques as a platform, we hope the BMDP can extend their reach and win support from the Malay community."
Weekly pre-prayer awareness talks and donor drives have been lined up until the end of December. The BMDP is also looking for support from the corporate sector to join the campaign. In order to achieve the target of 3,000 new Malay donors in a year, BMDP is calling for individuals from the ages of 18 to 49 and in good health to come forward and register as bone marrow donors at any of the donor drives. It only takes a finger-prick sample of blood to be tissue typed and placed into the bone marrow donor register. A registered donor will only be called upon to make a bone marrow donation if they are found to be a perfect match to a patient.
As it costs S$150 to tissue type each new donor, BMDP will need to raise $500,000 to fund donor recruitment for this campaign. As BMDP does not receive any funding from the government, the Malay community can also contribute to the cause by generously donating to the BMDP via the various events or through the website at http://www.bmdp.org/
Apart from the weekly drives, individuals looking to register as bone marrow donors can go to the BMDP office at the Singapore Blood bank or the Blood Centre at the National University Hospital at any time. Donor recruitment centres have also been set up at 20 clinics island-wide. Organisations looking to support the BMDP’s cause can also contact the BMDP directly.