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Jackson Memorial Hospital is Miami-Dade County’s first hospital to offer its moms and newborns the opportunity to donate umbilical cord blood directly to a licensed Florida public cord blood bank – a step that has helped save lives around the world.
Babies born at Jackson Memorial, the flagship of Jackson Health System, will become some of Florida’s youngest life savers by donating their cord blood to LifeCord, an FDA licensed cord blood bank of LifeSouth Community Blood Centers, headquartered in Gainesville, Fla. LifeCord is one of only five licensed cord blood banks in the country, and the only one in the Southeast. Donating cord blood is painless for mother and baby, and there is no charge for the life-saving service.
A kickoff event announcing the partnership between Jackson and LifeCord will be held at 10 a.m., Dec. 10, in the third floor family waiting room of The Women’s Hospital at Jackson Memorial, 1611 N.W. 12th Avenue, Miami. The event will include comments from a mother who has donated cord blood at Jackson, and from patients whose lives were saved by cord blood transplants.
“We were encouraged to partner with Jackson by Archie McNealy, a young man who grew up in Miami and died of cancer on Dec. 10, 2013, without receiving the matching cord donation that could have saved his life,” said LifeCord Director Yesi Sevilla. “Matches are most likely to be found when a patient and donor have the same racial or ethnic background, and the babies born at Jackson have the greatest ethnic diversity of any hospital in the Southeast.”
“Jackson and LifeCord are leading the way, giving parents the opportunity to make an incredibly generous gift that could one day save the life of a child or an adult,” said Carlos A. Migoya, president and chief executive officer of Jackson Health System. “Cord blood collection is safe, simple, and its impact can be priceless – we are thrilled that Jackson is part of this noble effort.”
Cord blood is rich with blood-forming stem cells that can help patients who are in need of a bone marrow transplant. Cord blood transplants have successfully treated cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases. After a patient’s diseased marrow is destroyed, the transplanted cord blood stem cells act like seeds to re-grow healthy, functioning marrow.
Cord blood offers some practical advantages over traditional adult marrow or stem cell donations. While the tissue from an adult donor must be matched with near pinpoint accuracy to a recipient, cord blood from a newborn can succeed with less perfect matching. It’s also tested, frozen and ready for transplant, saving time for patients in need.
Because matches are based on tissue types, patients who need a transplant are more likely to match a donor of the same race or ethnicity. Cord blood collected from racially diverse communities is desirable and will help treat patients in Miami-Dade County and around the globe.
LifeCord is already meeting with expectant parents at Jackson, in the hospital’s prenatal classes and at community health fairs. The more heroes who donate their baby’s cord blood, the greater the chance a patient in need can find a match.
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