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Cyprus has the world’s largest bone marrow donor registry in proportion to its population, according to the Karaiskakio Foundation, with more than 205,400 Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot volunteers currently registered.
The figure was released ahead of World Marrow Donor Day, which takes place on September 22 under the theme “Heroes of Hope”, recognising the contribution of volunteers who donate blood-forming stem cells to patients in need of a transplant.
The size of Cyprus’s registry also has an international impact. More than 1,000 donors registered in Cyprus have so far provided stem cell donations to patients in 36 countries, according to the Foundation.
The Karaiskakio Foundation is part of the international network coordinated by the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA), which represents more than 44 million volunteer donors across 60 countries. The network allows transplant centres to search internationally when a suitable donor cannot be found within a patient's family.
More than 70,000 patients each year look for a compatible donor outside their family, according to the WMDA. Around half of those who eventually find a compatible volunteer donor are matched with someone in another country.
Cyprus's registry therefore plays a role both locally and internationally, with searches carried out for compatible donors for patients in Cyprus as well as for patients overseas.
The Foundation said that maintaining and expanding the registry remains important because genetic diversity within the Cypriot population, together with demographic changes, can affect the likelihood of finding a compatible unrelated donor.
New registrations are particularly important because the greater the number and diversity of volunteers in a registry, the greater the pool available when patients require a match.
The Karaiskakio Foundation has been a member of the WMDA since 2000 and received the association's accreditation in 2008, placing it among the first donor registries worldwide to receive the accreditation.
The global need for donors has grown alongside the use of stem cell transplantation as a treatment. Since the first bone marrow transplant was carried out in 1956, more than one million patients worldwide have undergone transplantation. Blood-forming stem cell transplantation can now be used in the treatment of more than 70 different diseases.
In Cyprus, the Foundation marks September as “Leukaemia Month”, holding awareness and information activities focused on leukaemia and bone marrow donation.
For World Marrow Donor Day, the Foundation is also encouraging the public to take part in the international social media campaign by sharing stories of courage, recovery and generosity under #thankyoudonor, #WMDD26 and #HopeHero.
