Students mobilize and sign up an impressive 150 new donors to National Marrow Donor Program

The MBA Net Impact Club, the MBA International Students Organization and the undergraduate club ASCEND partnered up with a representative organization of the U.S. National Marrow Donor Program to conduct a bone marrow donor registration drive on April 19.

All club leaders and a core team of volunteers worked tirelessly to publicize this event and to bring as many students to register at the drive as possible. The effort by the students was extremely successful: 150 new donors were signed up on to the U.S. Marrow Donor Program. Saliva samples were taken from each of them through a simple cheek swab.

"Based on my talks with the representatives of the Marrow Donor Program and based on similar drives that have been held in the area before, I know that registering 50-75 new donors is considered the benchmark for a very successful drive,’’ Professor Divya Anantharaman said. "So the RBS drive was tremendously successful by all standards.”

"Hopefully, many of the new donors we signed up will go on to donate blood stem cells to patients suffering from leukemia (or other related blood disorders) and save lives,” Anantharaman said.

The lead student organizers were Marish Gnanam and Sai Deepthi Bellam, members of Net Impact, Akash Vashishtha, a members of the International Students Organization and Vinesh Patel, a member of ASCEND.

In addition, the following volunteers played a key role in the event: MBA students Anupriti Warade, Sairam Inguva, Rajesh Soraisham, Sattvik Sharma and Siddharth Kothari.