Update: Bone Marrow Drive Huge Success!

Organizers of Eastern Maine Medical Center’s Bone Marrow Drive are calling Saturday’s event a huge success. The goal was to top last year’s total of 200 people who joined the national registry and it was realized with 261 adults added at this year’s drive!

Cancer  Care’s Barbara Clement says the need is great, both nationally and locally.

"Nationally, matches are about one in twenty thousand. So, it's really important for us to get as many people as we can on the national registry to be a match," Barbara told us. "Here locally, we have folks in our own community who are in need of bone marrow donors. In our facility, we have about 75 patients a year diagnosed with either leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma that could be potentially in need of donors."

The Bone Marrow Drive was held as part of the EMMC Champion the Cure challenge, an annual event held at the Lafayette Family Cancer Center in Brewer to raise money for local cancer research.