Latino Bone Marrow Donors Needed To Diversify Registry
Style Magazine Newswire | 7/27/2018, 8:10 a.m.
Source: HoustonPublicMedia.org
Latinos are less likely to find the bone marrow donation they need to survive a deadly disease. That’s spurring efforts in Houston to increase the Latino presence in the bone marrow donor registry. For a bone marrow donation to be viable it must be a genetic match to the recipient, so identifying a donor with the same ethnic background is crucial. That’s why Be the Match is expanding efforts to increase donor diversity in Houston within the Latino community. Over 40% of Houston’s population is Latino. The organization is implementing bilingual awareness campaigns and developing contacts within Houston’s growing Latino community. Finding a genetic match isn’t only more difficult for Latinos, all people of color, especially biracial individuals, have a harder time finding a donor than white Americans of European descent.
