Birth in my country

Canadian Blood Services Helps Canadians find Stem Cell Donors

Canadian Blood Services helps patients across Canada to find donors for stem cell transplants. This includes operating a public bank of cord blood donations.

Story of Lourdess

Lourdess Sumners recently finished college at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. Back in 2008, she needed a stem cell transplant to cure her leukemia. Patients are most likely to find a matching stem cell donor in their own ethnic group, but this is a challenge for mixed race patients like Lourdess. Her father is Caucasian, while her mother is Filipino. Cord blood can be a lifesaver for these patients because the match does not have to be perfect, the way it would for a bone marrow donor. In the end, Lourdess was transplanted with two partially matched cord blood units, one from the United States and the other from Japan.

“The world is a diverse place and more people need to donate and be a part of it,” says Lourdess. “It’s just one small thing that can affect somebody’s life in the best way possible.”

Story of Ameilia

Ameilia Powder is a 10-year old member of the Fort McKay First Nation in northeast Alberta. She was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in March of 2020 and went through five months of chemotherapy before she could leave Edmonton Children’s Hospital. Unfortunately, in January 2021 she relapsed, and now is searching for a stem cell donor.

Currently, about 26% of the cord blood donations to Canadian Blood Services are from families of mixed ethnicity. Since the inception of their public cord blood bank in 2013, Canadian Blood Services has collected over 34,000 cord blood donations from hospitals in Ottawa, Brampton, Edmonton and Vancouver. Mothers expecting to deliver in those cities can register online to donate. Each donation can help save a life.