GLASSBORO–The Rowan football team enrolled 299 people to the Be The Match Registry. With the Get In The Game, Save A Life program, the team held a bone marrow donor registry on April 27 at the Chamberlain Student Center.
Rowan is one of 29 schools that are participating in the program this spring. The goal of 5,000 registered people has already been surpassed as 5,410 have signed up at 17 schools. Individuals that were tested will become a member of the registry.
Last year was the first time that the Profs held a registry and they enrolled 371 people. Defensive end Matt Hoffman was selected as a match for a 52 year old man suffering from non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In the fall, he donated blood stem cells and missed the final game of the season.
On any given day, thousands of men, women and children are searching the registry for a life-saving donor. These patients have leukemia, lymphoma and other life-threatening diseases that can be treated by a bone marrow or cord blood transplant. For many of the patients, a transplant may be the best and only hope for a cure.
The National Marrow Donor Program has facilitated over 25,000 marrow and cord blood transplants. For additional information visit www.marrow.org.