CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — An eye opening statistic shows that minorities battling a blood cancer have a more difficult time finding a matching bone marrow donor.
Corpus Christi mom Cindie Deleon was inside city council chambers Tuesday afternoon, hoping her son's story could help spearhead change.
"In 2018 he did pass away from leukemia," she said. "Because he did not have a match, simple as that."
Deleon's son, 22-year-old Lou Gonzalez was one of many others who needed a marrow transplant, but never found a matching donor in time. Deleon was there when the city recognized Tuesday as 'Be the Match Day in Corpus Christi.
Leticia Mondragon with Be the Match has made it her mission to help raise awareness about the importance of signing up donors for the registry.
"He's one of the examples of how we need individuals from the community of all ethnicities to sign up for the registry," she said.
3NEWS learned that finding a donor isn't based on blood type but rather your ethnic background. And unfortunately, not everyone has the same chance.
"When we look at the national statistics, we have Caucasian/white people who have a 79-percent chance at finding a match," she said, "and it drops down dramatically low to 48-percent for Latino and Hispanic patients and even less for African Americans at 29 percent."
Mondragon said that registering to be on a donor list is easy. All it takes is a simple cheek swab. However, there is a big need for more black and Hispanic donors to sign up because some ethnic groups have more complex tissue types than others.
"I think for me, the biggest misconception is that if I'm a match it's going to be this painful surgical procedure, but there's been a lot of changes since be the match has existed," she said.
In order to help find a more diverse pool of candidates, Mondragon visits college campuses to encourage students to sign up for the registry.
"Earlier this semester we had the nursing students from Texas A&M Corpus Christi, they hadn't had a drive in a few years. They hosted a two-day marrow registry drive, and in two days we added over 400 names to our Be the Match registry," she said.
More than 100,000 transplants have been done in 30 years thanks to potential donors who signed up on the registry -- but there are many others still in need of their match.
"What would happen if your future child needed a match in your family, l wouldn't you want to be that hope for them?" she said.
For more information about the registry click here.
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