The Hindu Student Council, in collaboration with Matchpia.org and Two Cents for Hope, hosted the first annual bone marrow registry drive Tuesday in the Brickyard and on Centennial Campus. The HSC said it hoped to increase awareness of the need for bone marrow donation and specifically focused the lack of access to these transplants among Asians, Hispanics and African Americans.

HSC Treasurer Gaurav Gupta, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering, said it is important that everyone is made aware of how severe a problem finding a match can be for cancer patients.

“The drive mainly targeted the minority community,” Gupta said. “The chance of finding a matching bone marrow donor for people suffering from cancer in these communities is about one in a hundred thousand.”

Gupta said the volunteer support for this event was excellent and estimated the HSC was able to register over 100 bone marrow donors through the event.

“We had around 30 volunteer technicians that we distributed around campus,” Gupta said. “People filled out a health questionnaire describing if they had any diseases, then volunteers inserted a swab into their mouth and extracted saliva from their cheek.”

Gupta said the saliva samples will be analyzed to assess the possibility of matching donors to cancer patients in the future.

“The information goes to the national bone marrow donor database,” Gupta said. “The aim is for future bone marrow transplants.”

HSC Undergraduate Representative Remya Srinivas said the event helped volunteer participants truly understand the suffering cancer patience experience.

“Until the volunteers came and watched the video, no one really had a clue what it is like in the daily life of leukemia patients and how much finding a match means to them,” Srinivas said.

Srinivas reflected this cause is something that can truly change the life of someone who is suffering, and it is something anyone can get involved with.

“It doesn’t take more than 10 minutes, and it is something that we as college students can do for someone else,” Srinivas said.

HSC President Sibin Mohan, a graduate student in computer science, said he hopes to make the drive an annual event and plans on partnering with other student groups in future drives to increase the scope of the registration.

“The next time we do this event we are actually planning to involve several other student groups on campus,” Mohan said. “We want to target a larger audience and get more students involved.”

Gupta said it is most important that the unavailability of bone marrow is brought to the attention of those who can make a difference.

“The main idea behind this drive is promote awareness,” Gupta said. “There is a need to look into this in minority communities because this is an issue that needs to be addressed.”