MfD: Czech Jewish Community seeks marrow donors of Jewish origin

Prague, March 14 (CTK) - The Czech Jewish Community is planning a campaign to recruit new donors of marrow exclusively of Jewish origin, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes yesterday.

At first sight it may sound strange, as if Jews were searching for "kosher" blood, but in fact no attempts at segregation are behind the campaign, MfD writes, referring to doctors.

The recruitment of Jewish donors is based on medical reasons. In marrow transplant surgeries, doctors always seek a suitable donor with the tissue features corresponding to the recipients. The features are ascertainable in white blood cells, MfD writes.

"These features are hereditary and their specific combinations are typical of particular geographical areas," Tomas Svoboda, from the National registry of marrow donors, told the paper.

"That is why we want the registry to be complemented by donors from ethnic minorities, including Jews who have not much genetically changed for long centuries," Svoboda said.

The optimal donor is aged 18-35, including women who have not been pregnant yet.

The recruiting campaign will be held in the form of a concert for young people in a synagogue. Its date and venue have been kept secret for now for security reasons, MfD writes.

During the concert, those interested would have their blood samples taken for them and doctors to find out whether they are suitable donors, the daily writes.

Katerina Mikulcova, from the Jewish Community, said everybody with Jewish blood in his/her veins has a chance of saving the life of another, no matter if the donor's both parents are Jews or he has only Jewish mother or comes from a mixed marriage in the second or third generation of his ancestors.

In addition, the unique blood features differ with people living in Greenland and in equatorial Africa, for example. All this influences the extent of the probability of finding a suitable donor, the daily continues.

"For a Czech patient it is practically impossible to find a donor among black Africans or Romanies [whose region of origin is India] and vice versa," Svoboda said.

He said it occurs now and then that a Czech patient has so rare blood features that only two suitable donors can be found for him in the 20-million registries all over the world - mostly either in the registry of the USA, which includes the Jewish ethnic group, or in the Israeli national register.