UAB hosts Dona-MO campaign to promote bone marrow donation
05/03/2019
UAB will host on 7 March and for the third year in a row the campaign “Dona-MO”, which is meant to raise awareness on bone marrow donation in order to tackle the treatment of leukemia. Thos activity is supported by Fundació Josep Carreras and different volunteers from the Biosciences faculty will participate in it, including Alex Raventós, coordinator of the activity.
The event will take place in Plaça Cívica and will start with an Information Table at 12.30 noon and will follow an evening full of workshops and talks on different topics like immunology and cancer, science and gender and veganism. This year attendees will also be able to enjoy musical performances from the hip hop school DADA Dance School and a concert by rapper ZPU, where he will present his first poem book Marcar como no leído.
There will be a charity stand in Plaça Cívica throughout the entire event. Beers will cost 1 € and all benefits will be donated to the fight against leukemia.
About the foundation
Fundació Josep Carreras was launched in July 1987 when tenor Josep Carreras was diagnosed with leukemia. He decided to create a foundation to fight against leukemia in 1988, after he overcame the illness. The foundation started to manage the official register of bone marrow donations in 1991 along with the health public system. Nineteen years later, the Foundation created the research institute Institut d’Investigació contra la Leucèmia Josep Carreras (IJC).
According to what Josep Carreras explains in the IJC website, ‘out of the 300.000 new cases of leukemia that are diagnosed every year in the world, more than 5000 are Spaniards. This means thirteen people receive this cruel diagnosis every day in our country’. The only two conditions to be a donator are to be between 18-55 years old and to not suffer from a serious illness. The process is very simple and is not related with the spinal cord, as opposed to what many people may believe.
If you want more information, you can check out the following interview to Alex Raventós, the coordinator of this activity.