Bemidji State hosts cheek-swab drive for donor registry Tuesday

A simple cheek swab at Bemidji State University could open the door to a blood stem cell match for a patient far beyond Beltrami County. The university will host the National Marrow Donor Program from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday, April 28, at Hobson Memorial Union, giving students and community members a low-barrier way to join the donor registry without leaving campus.

The drive is aimed at expanding a registry that can be critical for people with blood cancers and blood disorders. NMDP says a blood stem cell transplant can cure or treat more than 75 diseases, including leukemia and sickle cell disease, and about 75% of patients cannot find a suitable donor in their own family. That leaves unrelated donors on the registry as the best chance for many people who are waiting for treatment.

The nonprofit says the people most often selected are donors ages 18 to 35, because younger donors are linked to more successful transplants and better long-term outcomes. Joining the registry takes 10 minutes or less, which makes the Bemidji event especially important for reaching healthy young adults who may not have considered that they could help save a life with a quick swab.

The event also reflects the role Bemidji State plays as more than an academic campus. Hobson Memorial Union is one of the university’s main gathering spaces for students and the Bemidji community, and its Beaux Arts Ballroom can seat up to 600 people for lectures or 450 for banquets. With about 5,100 undergraduates, more than 300 graduate students, and students from 36 states and 38 countries, the campus offers a wide pool of potential new registry members.

The need is urgent well beyond northern Minnesota. Blood-cancer groups say someone in the United States is diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma about every three minutes. By bringing NMDP to Bemidji State, the university is turning one campus event into a direct connection between local residents and a national lifesaving system, where a few minutes on Tuesday could matter for a family waiting anywhere in the country.