many people with blood cancers don’t
have suitable bone marrow donors in
their family and are desperately waiting
to find a stranger who’s a match now
several Pennsylvania state lawmakers are
hoping to change that they’re
introducing legislation to create a
public health education program and
database to shine a light on the need
for these life-saving
donors it can be tough for
pennsylvanians with leukemia and other
blood cancers to find a bone marrow
transplant match for many finding a
donor is their only hope for a
I’ve had several members of my family
that have been affected by such uh
instances and I do want to make sure
that people are you know have the best
opportunity that if they are diagnosed
with you know an illness such as blood
cancer or anything else that they have
the best chance of survival state
representative Joe mcandrew of Pen Hills
and a handful of others are preparing a
bill that would establish a bone marrow
recruitment program run by the PA Health
Department it would spread the word
about the need for donations and how to
join the National bone marrow donor
regist three 70% of patients who need a
transplant do not have a fully matched
donor within their families so their
doctors will turn to this database to
help find an unrelated donor on the
National Registry more people are needed
to join the registry so patients can
have a greater chance of finding a match
longtime state representative Tony Duca
is mentioned in the memo sent to All
house members it says this is an issue
that has directly affected the families
of several house members in recent years
including our colleague Tony duuc
Duca died in October 2022 he was
battling lymphoma a disease he had beat
twice before my father-in-law you know
is going through leukemia right now it’s
a similar type of leukemia that uh my
predecessor representative Luca passed
away from and I really believe that you
know giving people opportunities to get
this life-saving procedure will move the
ball forward for our health of our of
our people representative mcandrew says
they did a survey for this bill and
found around 200 thousand pennsylvanians
would be willing to donate bone marrow
this is from living donors and so you
can donate that time and time again and
it will lead to more people being saved
rep mcandrew tells me they’re about to
start the process to try to get this
donor recruitment legislation through
the house
