FROM next month, the Hongkong Marrow Match Foundation and the Red Cross will be organising monthly recruitments of potential bone marrow donors.
The Hongkong Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui will make its services available on the last Wednesday of every month to people who wish to join the bone marrow donor registry.
Blood samples collected will be sent to Los Angeles, where results of the tissue typing will be available within two weeks for storage in the foundation's database in Hongkong.
Dr Raymond Liang Hin-suen, secretary of the foundation, said public awareness of the needs of unrelated bone marrow donations to save the lives of patients with blood disease had increased tremendously over the past 18 months, and he believed the new arrangement would provide a more convenient venue for people wishing to join the registry.
Despite the rapid increase in registered donors, the foundation is still short of its target of 25,000. The total stands at 16,080 and is the biggest non-Caucasian bone marrow registry in the world.
Ten unrelated bone marrow transplants have been carried out in Hongkong and Mrs Lavender Patten, patron of the foundation, yesterday officiated at a ceremony to honour the donors.