Karaiskakion Foundation joins World Marrow Donor Association

The Karaiskakion Foundation, Cyprus’ Bone Marrow Donor Registry (BMDR), has been accredited to the World Marrow Donor Association (BMDW), having met its accreditation programme successfully.
The Foundation is only the 13th bone marrow donor registry worldwide to have managed to get WMDA accreditation.
The Karaiskakion Foundation is a non-profit organisation established for the sole purpose of giving hope for life to people suffering from leukaemia. The Cyprus Bone Marrow Donor Registry, with more than 100,000 registered volunteer donors, has the highest per capita ratio of donors in the world. Being advanced and efficient with highly qualified and experienced staff, it helps patients from all over the world to find compatible donors for bone marrow transplant.
All donors recruited through the Registry automatically become part of the international registry Bone Marrow Donors Worldwide which can be easily accessed by all registries in their search for a compatible donor. Donors registered in Karaiskakion have helped patients from 20 different countries.
The World Marrow Donor Association is a voluntary organisation of representatives of blood stem cell donor registries, cord blood banks, other organisations and individuals, with an interest in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. It provides a forum for mutual discussion of all issues regarding the clinical use of hematopoietic stem cells from unrelated donors across international boundaries. These discussions, which take place in working groups, make it possible to formulate guidelines on for example logistics, quality control, accreditation, ethcis, finances and information technology.
The Karaiskakion Foundation has been a member of WMDA since 2000 and its Director Dr Paul Costeas was elected President of the Ethics Committee and member of the board of WMDA in 2005 and re-elected in 2007.