The Chinese Student Association will be holding a blood and bone marrow drive in the HUB today aimed primarily at minority students. The event is a collaboration between the CSA and the Puget Sound Blood Center, or PSBC.

“[We are] mainly in charge of promoting the blood drive and focusing on our primary target donors,” said Angela Zhang, president of the association. “The actual drive itself is operated by the Puget Sound Blood Center.”

According to PSBC statistics, only 1 percent of blood donors in the Puget Sound region are of ethnic descent. This is problematic since antigens, a group of substances in the blood that support the immune system, are inherited from generation to generation, and a perfect match is most easily found within blood donations from the same ethnic group as the recipient. For patients that need multiple transfusions, such as those with blood diseases like sickle cell anemia, the need for a perfect match in blood donations is even higher.

“We are specifically targeting minority donors because ethnicity really matters when it comes to blood donations,” said Xi Zhang, community service coordinator for the association. “For people that need multiple transfusions, such as people with sickle cell anemia, it’s important for them to get an exact match of not just blood type but also ethnicity, since there are other factors with blood other than the blood type. So, it’s pretty important for minorities to donate.”

The blood drive is not just gathering blood donations. The student asssociation and the blood center are also attempting to swell the numbers of minorities on the bone marrow registry, which is a list of willing bone marrow donors in the Puget Sound region. Bone marrow is the material in the body that produces new blood, and oftentimes there are patients that need transfusions of the material.

“The term bone marrow transplant may call up visions of cutting out pieces of bone,” according to the blood center’s Web site. “However, it is really the transfer of stem cells from a donor to a recipient. Mechanically the technique has more in common with transfusion than with organ transplantation.”

Much like blood transfusions, bone marrow transplants rely partially on ethnicity when it comes to matching up a donor with a recipient.

“[The need for minority donors] is true of the bone marrow registry as well,” Xi Zhang said. “There’s a 90 percent chance of matching within your own ethnic group, and there just aren’t many Asians or other minorities on the bone marrow registry.”

This is a major reason the CSA and the PSBC are seeking out minority donors.

“In China and other Asian countries, it’s taboo to donate blood,” Xi Zhang said. “There’s a common misconception there that bleeding blood is bad for your health. Because of this, it is oftentimes very hard to get Asians to donate blood. Through this blood drive, we are hoping to promote the importance of blood donations.”

The blood/bone marrow drive will be held in the HUB from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today.

Reach reporter Anthony Michael Erickson at news@dailyuw.com.