Bone marrow donation grows in Spain to 434,000 donors, with 80 new donors registered every day in 2020

With the latest additions to the list, the Spanish Register of Bone Marrow Donors (Spanish acronym: REDMO) - which is managed by the Josep Carreras Foundation in coordination with the Spanish National Transplant Organisation (Spanish acronym: ONT) and the regional government authorities - now consists of close on 434,000 names.

These figures compiled by the ONT and REDMO represent an increase of 4.5% in the number of people registered as bone marrow donors at 31 August 2020 and an average of 2,374 new donors every month (some 80 new donors each day).

Spain is fast approaching its target of 500,000 donors by 2022, in line with the goals set by the National Bone Marrow Plan (Spanish acronym: PNMO). In this regard, Spain reached its target of 400,000 donors by 2020 almost two years ahead of schedule. The current global register of donors, which includes all the national registers, includes more than 37 million donors and 800,000 units of umbilical cord blood. This register is used to perform international donor matching whenever a patient needs it.

Since this plan was launched in early 2013, the number of donors registered in Spain has multiplied fourfold. In its final stage, the PNMO adds qualitative improvement as one of the goals, focused on rejuvenating the register and on the inclusion of male donors.

At present, 63% of registered donors are women compared and 37% are men. This trend persisted during the early months of 2020: seven out of ten people registering as a donor were women. However, the chances of a man becoming an effective donor are triple those of a woman given that they are far more in demand by medical teams because donations from men are linked to better results following the transplant.

The ONT recognises the significant effort made by the regional governments to achieve these results, from both an economic point of view and in terms of human resources. Since its launch, the PNMO has received funding from both the Spanish Central Government and the various regional governments, which have jointly paid for the cost of donor blood typing. Specifically, the Ministry of Health has allocated 7.3 million euros since 2013 on developing this plan.

The impact from COVID-19

In the first eight months of the year, the number of registered marrow donors rose to 18,993 in spite of the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 health crisis. This figure is very close to the 22,006 donors who registered in the same period of 2019. The data show that donation activity in the last four months is similar to that of last year (see Figure 1).

Thanks to public solidarity and the work by those forming the bone marrow donation and transplantation network in Spain during the State of Emergency, a total of 5,734 marrow donations took place between 13 March and 21 June 2020, leading to 45 effective donations.

'Un Match x Una Vida'

To support the celebration of World Marrow Donor Day last year, the ONT, REDMO, the Josep Carreras Foundation and the 17 Regional Transplant Coordination Offices presented a campaign entitled 'Un Match x Una Vida' [A Match for a Life] aimed at encouraging marrow donation and attracting potential donors aged between 14 and 40, especially men, to help reach the target set by REDMO of 500,000 registered donors.

The initiative has a website and several official social media profiles. Various street marketing activities took place under this campaign, with information stands being set up in 17 Spanish cities between October 2019 and January 2020.

Over the course of those months, thousands of young people expressed their interest and wanted to learn about bone marrow donation. Many of them went on to register with REDMO. In total, 13,564 people registered as donors between October and January.

The media repercussion from the campaign translated into more than 50,000 views of the promo video, 4,000 social media followers and over 1,000,000 impressions for all the publications as a whole. Furthermore, the campaign appeared in the press, radio and television more than 170 times. Over 1,000 questions about bone marrow were also received and answered.

The ONT and REDMO have chosen to publish these data to coincide with World Marrow Donor Day, which will be celebrated on 19 September, with various events being organised by patient associations throughout the country to pay tribute to bone marrow donors around the world.

The organisations involved in the PNMO (ONT, regional governments, REDMO, Josep Carreras International Foundation, Spanish Association of Haematology and Haemotherapy, and patient associations) are grateful to the people of Spain for their generosity and encourage them to find out more about the importance of this type of donation. The website for the 'Un Match x Una Vida' campaign contains all the figures, as well as a list of centres where people can register as a donor.

Non official translation