Introduction
Every year, more than a thousand adult and children in Hong Kong are diagnosed with leukaemia and other serious blood diseases. Some of these diseases are life-threatening, but they are not always incurable. For many patients, haematopoietic stem cell transplantation may be the only hope. A matched donor is a pre-requisite for a successful transplantation. Some patients are fortunate to have one within their families, others have to look for voluntary unrelated donors.
In 1991, a sixteen-month-old Chinese Canadian, Gordon Wu, required haematopoietic stem cell transplantation to treat a deadly blood disease. In light of the lack of a suitable donor from his family and through worldwide search of unrelated donors, his parents brought him to Hong Kong and launched an unprecedented "Save Little Gordon" campaign. The campaign has raised tremendous public awareness about haematopoietic stem cell donation, as a result, within just a few weeks, more than 13,000 people have registered for haematopoietic stem cell donation. Subsequently, with financial help from other volunteers, the Hong Kong Marrow Match Foundation ("HKMMF") was established as the first all-Chinese haematopoietic stem cell donor registry in the world.
As at the end of 2024, more than 186,000 people in Hong Kong have registered for voluntary haematopoietic stem cell donation, and 738 of them have already donated their haematopoietic stem cell to patients. In addition, Hong Kong has successfully facilitated unrelated haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for 1339 local and overseas patients.
Starting from 1st September 2005, the HKMMF transferred the donor data and operation of the registry to the Hong Kong Red Cross ("HKRC"). The latter has then set up a new registry named the Hong Kong Bone Marrow Donor Registry ("HKBMDR"). On the same date, both HKMMF and HKRC have appointed the Hospital Authority operated Hong Kong Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service ("BTS") as their agent to access and use the donor data in the HKMMF and HKBMDR. Since then, the BTS has taken up all services provided by the HKMMF previously, including but not limited to providing tissue typing for both patients and donors, running unrelated donor search locally and internationally, liaising unrelated haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for local and overseas patients, public education and conducting haematopoietic stem cell transplantation research.
1. Donor recruitment
Public can register as a marrow donor by attending one of the donor centres / mobile donation service / mobile donation vehicles in HKRCBTS.
2. Donor Search
Hong Kong Bone Marrow Donor Registry (HKBMDR) is the only registry in Hong Kong for voluntary unrelated bone marrow donors. We help local and overseas patients in need of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplant to find suitable donors.
Information of registered donors is kept in the registry. When a donor search is initiated, the BTS will try to find a matched donor in the registry. If a potential donor is found, the BTS will closely liaise with the donor and the patient's hospital and to arrange the donor for medical checkup as well as other follow-up works.
If potential matched donors cannot be identified in Hong Kong, HKBMDR will contact the overseas registries to request a search for potential donors. All the search request must be submitted and referred from hospital to HKBMDR. HKBMDR will undergo a computer search for matched donors. Under normal circumstances, several blood tests may be required before a highly matched or full matched donors be identified. If the patients and their family members wish to know the search progress, they are advised to contact their doctor in-charge.
The most important factor is to match both donor's and recipient's tissue types (also known as "HLA antigens"). Red blood cells are grouped into types A, B, AB and O, etc. As for white blood cells, they also have tissue types mainly classified into 4 groups, namely A, B, C and DR groups. Each group has a large number of antigens and hence there are thousands of different tissue types for white blood cells.
Prospective donors will need to have blood tested to determine his/her tissue types. If the tissue types of a donor completely match with the patient, he/she will be a matched donor.
