NEW HAVEN, Conn. – In recognition of the impact her courageous battle with cancer has had on efforts to save lives through marrow donor registration drives, the Yale athletic department is once again partnering with Be The Match® and holding a drive in memory of women's ice hockey player
Mandi Schwartz '10 (Wilcox, Sask.) (1988-2011).
This year's drive is "virtual", eliminating the need for potential marrow donors to come to Cross Campus to register.
The Mandi Schwartz Marrow Donor Registration Drive at Yale, which is part of the nationwide "Get in the Game. Save a Life." campaign for Be The Match®, offers two ways for people ages 18 to 44 to join the Be The Match Registry
® for the chance to become a life-saving marrow or blood stem cell donor:
Donors who could help save lives are found through testing that consists of simple cheek swabs, a process that takes five minutes. Swab kits are created in a sterile environment at Be The Match's biorepository, then sealed and shipped to the registrants. Registrants swab their cheeks at home and mail the kit back to Be The Match using a prepaid envelope.
The "Get in the Game. Save a Life." program started at Villanova under football coach Andy Talley. That program, involving 135 college athletic teams nationwide organizing drives on their campuses, has resulted in 106,000 potential donors being registered and 621 life-saving transplants.
Larry Ciotti, a long-time assistant football coach at Yale, is a friend of Talley's and brought the idea to Yale. The Yale athletic department has held drives each of the past 11 springs, starting after Mandi was diagnosed with cancer (leukemia) in December of 2008. The drives are led by the field hockey, football, women's ice hockey and men's soccer teams.
Yale's record-setting drives have added 7,536 potential donors to the Be The Match Registry, and at least 70 life-saving donor matches for patients in need have been located through the Bulldogs' efforts.
Mandi's story has been one of the driving forces behind the success of the Yale drives. With no matching adult donor found, in September 2010 she required a blood stem cell transplant -- designed to give her a new immune system -- using two anonymously donated units of umbilical cord blood. A biopsy in December 2010 indicated that she had relapsed, and she passed away at home in Saskatchewan on Apr. 3, 2011. She was 23 years old.
Mandi's plight shed further light on the needs of cancer patients everywhere, and the value of marrow donation. Every year 18,000 people of all ages are diagnosed with leukemia and other life-threatening diseases. Many of them will pass away unless they get a marrow, blood stem cell or umbilical cord blood transplant from a matching donor.
Seventy percent of these patients do not have a fully matched donor in their family and depend on the Be The Match Registry to find a genetic match to save their life. To join the Be The Match Registry, an individual must meet certain health guidelines and be willing to donate to any patient in need.
Those interested in helping with the Mandi Schwartz Marrow Donor Registration Drive at Yale can contact
Larry Ciotti at
larry.ciotti@yale.edu. Those with questions for Be The Match (related to joining the registry, donating, etc.) can call 1-800-MARROW-2.
More information:
