Elizabethtown College offers programs such as “Into the Streets” for students to become involved with the community and offer assistance to others. Similarly, the Colleges Against Cancer club at Etown hopes to engage students in fighting cancer with its bone marrow drive on Dec. 1 in the KAV.
Colleges Against Cancer (CAC) is offered at different campuses across the country. Director of Admissions Debra Murray is currently advising the Etown branch of Colleges Against Cancer. The club’s mission is to raise awareness in the community and lend a supporting hand to people afflicted with cancer. Relay For Life is the largest event it holds on campus.
The club is introducing a new event — a bone marrow drive offered by Delete Blood Cancer DKMS. DKMS’s main focus is on curing blood cancer. It got its start when a man by the name of Peter Harf went door-to-door with his daughter in search of a bone marrow donor who matched his wife, Mechtild Harf.
Mechtild passed away because of her illness, but the Harf family continued to combat cancer by opening the world’s largest bone marrow donor center. It branched out from the US to the U.K., Germany, Poland and Spain.
The bone marrow drive was brought to Elizabethtown because Etown’s CAC club wanted to expand further than Relay For Life. Advocacy Chair Erin Kelly commented on the procedure for testing for donors. “People think that it’s going to be scary that they’re going to have to be stuck with a needle, but it’s actually just a cheek swab,” Kelly said. The process takes around 30 seconds.
If a person is matched with a patient, they will be contacted and proceed to the second part of the process, the extraction of bone marrow. There are two ways of donating bone marrow. The first is by taking blood through two IVs. The process takes about five hours. During this time, doctors will take what is needed out of the blood and then put it back into the body.
The second way is through an extraction of bone marrow from the pelvis. 80 percent of the bone marrow donated is drawn from the blood. Only 20 percent is surgically removed from the pelvis.
Every four minutes, someone is diagnosed with blood cancer in the U.S. The most common form of treatment is a bone marrow transplant. While 30 percent of people diagnosed with blood cancer can find a matching donor in their family, there is a 70 percent chance they cannot and must rely upon strangers.
Members of the club have already been tested and are eager to see fellow students offer their assistance to stop cancer. “We want to raise awareness that there are ways you can help save lives that are pretty easy and basic,” Kelly said. “We’re hoping we can at least save one life.”
