Becoming a Bone Marrow Donor is much easier than in the past. All you need to do is go along, give a sample of blood and ask to be put on the register.

If you come up as a match for anyone worldwide looking a donor, it is most common now to use a Peripheral Stem Cell Collection through Apheresis. You will need to have a hormone injection to overstimulate your stem cell production and then give blood that is filtered for the stem cells.

This is much simpler than a Bone Marrow Harvest which was the only method in the past.

This method involves undergoing a general anaesthesia and having needles put into the back of the pelvis to draw out the bone marrow. They do still occasionally use this procedure, so please click here for more info on both procedures .

And please click on your relevant register below and contact them for more information.

There are certain criteria that exclude you from being a donor which vary from country to country so you will need to check.

links to international registries