Thousandth blood stem cell donation to Swiss Red Cross

The Swiss Red Cross stem cell donor programme is bearing results. Keystone / Bodo Schackow

The University Hospital Basel recently collected its thousandth blood stem cell donation. A thousand people in Switzerland have contributed to saving a person with a life-threatening blood disease such as leukemia.

The first donation of blood stem cells from the bone marrow took place in 1992, the blood donation company of the Swiss Red Cross announced on Thursday. Around 180,000 people are now registered in the blood stem cell donation register.

The register is networked worldwide. This increases the chance of finding a suitable donation for sick people. Nevertheless, no suitable blood stem cells can be found for one in four people suffering from a blood disease. According to the information, around 41 million donors are registered in over 55 countries.

For a long time, a leukemia diagnosis was tantamount to a death sentence. As Blood Donation SRC wrote, the discovery of HLA characteristics (tissue characteristics) by the French scientist Jean Dausset was the turning point: allowing the transplant of blood stem cells from another person.

HLA characteristics are different for every person. For a successful transplant, these characteristics must be very similar so that the treated person’s body does not reject the foreign blood stem cells. Young people aged 18 and over are being asked to donate blood stem cells.

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