Saturn National Donor Day:

Alabama Child Meets Life-Saving Maryland Donor

What better Valentine's Day gift than the "gift of life?"

Howard University and the National Minority Organ Tissue Transplant Education Program (MOTTEP^®) will launch 2005 Saturn National Donor Day with a press event and marrow education and recruitment drive at the Blackburn University Center Monday, Feb. 14, 2005.

U.S. Deputy Surgeon General Kenneth Moritsugu, who is an organ donor parent and a donor spouse, is scheduled to moderate the 10 a.m. (EST) press event at the Gallery Lounge. One of the event highlights will be the introduction of National Marrow Donor Program^® donor Regina Murphy, a nurse from Temple Hills, Md., and Ke'tavious "Keith" Johnson, a 2-year-old leukemia patient from Bay Minette, Ala., whose disease was put into remission by Murphy's marrow donation.

The event will also honor donor activist and cyclist Rodney Ford, a regular blood/apheresis donor who has bicycled across America five times in support of life-saving donation with particular emphasis on the need for donation among diversity segments.

The Howard University drive is one of nearly 200 blood and marrow donor drives being held nationwide on and near Valentine's Day as part of Saturn National Donor Day. MOTTEP is hosting the Howard activities. National MOTTEP is the first national organization to identify a two-fold solution to the significant problem in organ transplantation - the shortage of donors. The solution includes decreasing the number of persons being added to the national waiting list through health promotion/disease prevention campaigns, while simultaneously increasing the number of donors from diverse communities.

"MOTTEP has been a partner of National Donor Day since its inception in 1998," states Dr. Clive O. Callender, nationally renowned transplant surgeon at Howard University Hospital and Founder of MOTTEP. "There is an enormous shortage of donors and patients die every day as a result. This is true of all segments of our population but the need is particularly acute among diversity segments including African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics and Pacific Islanders. Our Valentine's Day message will help spread the word of the need for diverse donors and marrow registrants. The meeting of Keith and Regina will remind all of us of the value of the gift of life."

Saturn National Donor Day was launched on Valentine's Day in 1998 and with an aggregate of nearly 1,500 community drives over the last seven years, it is believed to be America's largest annual one day life-saving donation campaign. To date, Saturn retailers and their non-profit partners have:

• Collected more than 50,000 units of blood
• Added nearly 10,000 potential marrow donors to the NMDP Registry
• Told literally millions of Americans of the need for organ and tissue donors.

In addition to MOTTEP and the NMDP, Saturn, its UAW partners, Saturn retailers across America, additional national non-profit partners make Saturn National Donor Day possible: American Association of Blood Banks, American Liver Foundation, American Society of Transplant Surgeons, America's Blood Centers, Association of Organ Procurement Organizations, Children's Organ Transplant Association, Coalition on Donation, Emergency Nurses Association, Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of America, LifeSouth Community Blood Centers, The Marrow Foundation^®, National Kidney Foundation, United Network for Organ Sharing and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.