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1,544 Join NMDP RegistryThousands Share Life During Bike RideDonor awareness has increased as a result of the dedication and commitment of these 10 riders, who are either avid donors or are recipients of the gift of life themselves.
Drawing attention to the severe shortage of life-saving donations in the United States, people all along the route had the opportunity to donate blood and join the National Marrow Donor Program's Registry of volunteer marrow and blood stem cell donors. The results were remarkable:
And while these are easy numbers to measure, it's impossible to measure the thousands of people who will be given a second chance at life because of this single effort.
Five Points of Life Bike RideThe Five Points of Life organization is one of the only collaborative organizations in the United States that brings together the five ways people can share life with others: whole blood, apheresis, marrow and blood stem cells, umbilical cord blood, and organ & tissue donation.
Strangers Meet Their Life-Saving DonorsThe National Marrow Donor Program arranged two special donor and recipient meetings along the ride.
The second donor recipient meeting happened September 18 when Florida cancer survivor Rod Jagos met his life-saving marrow donor Tom Lambert of Virginia. The meeting took place outside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Hubert H. Humphrey Building as part of a National News Conference for the Five Points of Life Bike Ride.
The NeedConsider the following:
At an emotional close of the ride, cyclist Rodney Ford summed up the event in one simple statement: "The reason for being on this team was to give people - like the little kids we met along the way who battled life-threatening diseases - hope. Hope for a new life because somewhere a donor made the time to give blood or donate an organ." Five Points of Life is a program of LifeSouth Community Blood Centers. Partnering with LifeSouth to produce the Five Points of Life Ride are the American Association of Blood Banks, Coalition on Donation, National Marrow Donor Program and The Marrow Foundation. Ride sponsors include Johnson & Johnson, Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, State Farm Insurance, Haemonetics and Saturn/UAW.
For rider profiles and a complete day-to-day Ride Diary, please go to www.aabb.org or www.lifesouth.org |
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An event that started at sunrise on August 27 in Maine and ended 3,023 miles away in Florida on October 14 will, literally, save thousands of lives.
The Ride, now in its third year, is an effort to generate public awareness of the need for donations - not of money - but of gifts of life. Each member of the team was chosen because of his or her personal connection to one or more of the five points. Some are avid blood donors, some have donated marrow and others are recipients themselves. Traveling the East Coast, they kicked-off local donor days, held press conferences, met with community leaders and enticed hundreds of local riders to join the Ride as it entered their communities.
The first meeting took place on August 26 at the kick-off event in Bar Harbor, Maine, when 
In total, the three Five Points of Life Bike Rides have added 4,170 people to the National Marrow Donor Program's Registry and collected 18,055 whole blood donations and 2,347 apheresis donations. 
