Support TRANSPLANT Act and save lives
To the Editor,
Our nation is facing serious challenges. Over the past year, COVID-19 has had devastating effects on our economy and our healthcare system. One effect is that the means of transporting bone marrow and blood stem cells from a volunteer donor to a recipient is at risk.
As with donated organs, donated bone marrow and blood stem cells must be hand-delivered to the medical facilities where patients are receiving treatment. In the 1980s, Congress made a promise to patients with blood cancers that they would have a pathway to find a potentially life-saving donor match. That pathway was and is the National Marrow Donor Program, working with the Bet The Match registry.
Since these programs were originally authorized, they have developed a system for accessing more than 33 million potential donors and 765,000 cord blood units worldwide. They provide volunteer couriers who fly all around the world to safely deliver these lifesaving cells to patients whose survival depends on it. They have facilitated more than 100,000 transplants, giving patients with otherwise fatal blood cancers or blood disorders a second chance at life.
However, these programs can provide this service only if they continue to be designated as part of the nation’s official registry and donation program. Last year, efforts to reauthorize the C.W. Bill Young Cell Transplantation Program were stalled because of COVID-related changes to the legislative calendar. Recently, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) and Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA) re-introduced legislation — the TRANSPLANT Act (H.R. 941/S. 288) — to reauthorize the program.
Last week, I participated in a virtual “fly-in” to encourage Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (PA-5) to co-sponsor and vote to pass this legislation that patients with blood cancers and other life-threatening diseases desperately need. I know this from my first-hand experience with acute myeloid leukemia and my own lifesaving bone marrow transplant in 2015.
Today, as a bone marrow recipient, I am calling on Congress to continue to live up to this most important promise by passing the TRANSPLANT Act.
Nancy Oetinger
Wallingford
