Burlington Central High School, in partnership with Canadian Blood Services, held a successful bone marrow matching clinic for staff and students last Thursday (June 9)  – with the goal that all Halton District School Board high schools hold similar clinics in the future.

The school held a clinic conducted by Canadian Blood Service’s OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Network, which is responsible for finding and matching volunteer donors to patients who require stem cell transplants. The school learned of a clinic held at E.C. Drury High School earlier this school year, in which a match for a Milton resident was found.

Those who volunteered to be potential donors at the Thursday clinic completed a questionairre to determine if they are appropriate candidates for a donation. Clinic workers swabbed the inside of the cheek and the sample has been sent to Canadian Blood Services to determine potential matches with someone requiring a donation. If a match is identified, another series of permissions needs to occur prior to an actual donation being made. All potential donors must be at least 17 years old.

At the Burlington high school clinic, 12 students served as trained assistants for One Match; of the 97 people who provided samples, approximately 50 were senior students. Grade 12 student Bethany Herlihey was one of them. She says she donated a sample because time is of the essence for patients who need bone marrow as soon as possible. The test is very simple, she added.

“I think everyone should do it,” she says

“It is our hope that all of our schools will participate and to be able to provide an opportunity for members of the community to also be involved,” says Superintendent Stuart Miller.

The Board is participating in these clinics because “there is a need,” says Miller.

Across the country, there are 267,000 donors, with that donor level decreasing by 5,000 per year. Currently, 30 per cent of Canadians will find a match within their families, meaning 70 per cent of individuals will require a donation from an unrelated person.

Because Canadian Blood Services' OneMatch is a member of an international network of registries, it can also search more than 11 million donors on over 50 registries in other countries. By agreeing to make their donor data available worldwide, international registries have significantly increased the odds of being able to find a matching donor for any patient, anywhere in the world.

“Finding a match is like finding a needle in a haystack,” Miller says. “If we, as a school board, can help increase the number of needles in the stack, than we're helping many people who desperately need a bone marrow transplant.”