Temple Football Hosts Bone Marrow Drive on April 16

April 3, 2008

PHILADELPHIA - Do you have 20 minutes to save a life? Members of the Temple football team do. And they are asking their friends, family, and colleagues to join in the effort.

The Temple football team will take a break from its spring drills to help others. The team, in conjunction with Fox Chase Temple, will host its First Annual Bone Marrow Drive on Wednesday, April 16 at the Temple University's Howard Gittis Student Center (Room 200) from Noon to 5 p.m.

Who? You can save a life today!
What? Bone Marrow Drive
Where? Gittis Student Center - Room 200
When? Wed, April 16
How? All you need is 20 minutes and a cotton swab

The test is a simple cheek swab. No blood or needles are involved. It should take no more than 20 minutes for each person to register for the National Marrow Donor Program Registry and be tested.

Participants, who must be 18 to register, will receive free food, door prizes, entertainment by a disc jockey, and special guest appearances.

"The Temple Football program is honored to partner with Fox Chase Cancer Center to lead the first annual Temple University Marrow Donor Drive here on the University's main campus," head coach Al Golden said. "Our goal is to bring both awareness to the National Marrow Donor Program and hope to the more than 10,000 children and adults who are stricken with life-threatening disease and desperately need to find a matching donor. On Wednesday, April 16 you can be the answer to their prayers; you can save a life! The Fox Chase Bone Marrow Program has been saving lives for two decades here in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. In fact, this year the BMT Program at Fox Chase celebrated its 1000th transplant. On behalf of our football student-athletes and Temple Football, I encourage everyone in the Temple University Community to give just 20 minutes of your day on April 16th to be someone's angel and save a life."

On any given day, more than 6,000 men, women and children are searching the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) 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 these patients, a transplant may be the best and only hope of a cure.

If you are interested in becoming a donor, contact Ryan McNamee at 215-204-0859 or via email football@temple.edu, or simply show up at the Gittis Student Center - Rm. 200 on April 16.

Remember that the next person in need of a transplant could be you, a member of your family or a friend.

The National Transplant Assistance Fund, National Marrow Donor Program, Temple Hospital Bone Marrow Transplant Group, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society have partnered with several universities in the Northeast region of the country to help celebrate and raise awareness for Temple Hospital's 1,000th bone marrow transplant and the 25th anniversary of the National Transplant Assistance Fund.

Temple Football, along with the football programs at Villanova University, University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, University of Maine, University of Massachusetts, University of New Hampshire, University of Rhode Island and Wagner College, will be sponsoring bone marrow donor testing drives during the spring semester of 2008 to promote bone marrow transplant awareness and the need for more bone marrow donors across the country, especially in the minority communities.

Bone Marrow Registry Fast Facts & Flyers in PDF Format