Donor register appeals for fresh blood

There could be far fewer Swiss blood donors in years to come Keystone

A nationwide campaign to find around 5,000 new blood stem cell donors to fight diseases such as leukaemia has been launched in 25 Swiss towns and cities.

Those behind the SFr500,000 ($410,000) appeal announced on Monday say they urgently need “new blood” because more and more existing donors are getting too old to stay on the register.

“We can see we will lose a lot of donors in the next few years because of the age curve. They have to stand down when they reach 55,” Rudolf Schwabe, head of the donor organisation Swiss Blood Stem Cells, told swissinfo.

“In the past we have had no problem keeping the register at around 20,000 donors in Switzerland, but now we feel we need to go up by a few thousand to be sure we have enough donors in the future.”

Switzerland’s national register forms part of a worldwide network comprising more than 11 million blood stem cell donors. But Schwabe says this is still not enough to ensure every patient who needs a transplant gets one.

Every year in Switzerland alone more than 200 children and adults fall ill with leukaemia or other serious diseases of the bone marrow. For many of these patients being transplanted with healthy blood stem cells is the only hope of being cured.

“There is not a waiting list like for organ transplants. For 60-70 per cent of patients we have absolutely no difficulty finding a donor. But for the rest of them it is still very, very hard to find a matching donor,” said Schwabe.

“It’s a question of good or bad luck for the patient which blood type they are, but the more donors we have, the more chance we have of getting a match.”

Donor criteria

Any healthy person aged between 18 and 45 who also fulfils the criteria for giving blood can become a donor. The cut-off is set at 45 because of the high cost of testing volunteers, but they can stay on the register until 55.

Over the years the number of transplants carried out in Switzerland has risen continuously. In the 1990s an average of ten transplantations were carried out a year. There are now about 40 per year.

Since 1988, when the first blood stem cell transplant was carried out in Switzerland, around 280 have been carried out on Swiss patients.

Nowadays only a small percentage of transplants are carried out using stem cells from bone marrow: In almost 80 per cent of cases the stem cells are taken from the blood.

swissinfo, Adam Beaumont

In brief

To date the foundation has carried out 3,800 searches for patients in Switzerland and roughly 1,000 for patients abroad. Around 700 transplants were carried out in Switzerland and other countries thanks to the donor registry system.

International networking is crucial: almost 90% of blood stem cells for patients in Switzerland come from another country. Similarly, almost 90% of the blood stem cells donated in Switzerland go to patients abroad.

Blood stem cells

A partial or total breakdown of the blood stem cell system in the body’s bone marrow quickly causes life-threatening illnesses.

Blood stem cells have the important ability to differentiate into the various types of blood cells (red and white blood cells and blood platelets).

They are formed in the bone marrow; to a limited extent, every adult has adult stem cells in the bloodstream.

The umbilical cord also contains large quantities of blood stem cells. Around 10% of transplants are done using cord blood stem cells.