A record-breaking number of people signed up to be potential bone-marrow donors following a story about Susie Rabaca, who was in need of a transplant.
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She is due to give birth by Dec. 6 and was in desperate need of a bone-marrow transplant to help treat her leukemia.
Within days of her story airing Nov. 22, almost 40,000 people registered for the Be The Match registry.
More information about becoming a potential blood stem cell donor is available here from Be The Match.
A bone marrow transplant can be a potentially life-saving procedure for those with leukemia. But for the process to work, the donor needs to be a close match. There are some 30 million people on the worldwide registry.
Leukemia patient expecting twins hoping for donor to save her life
Rabaca is already a mother of three. Her sister is a 50 percent match, but doctors say it's not good enough to treat her aggressive acute myeloid leukemia.
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She needed a 100 percent match, but Rabaca's mixed heritage - Latino and Caucasian - had made finding a donor difficult.
Rabaca and her family have been on a mission to sign up as many potential donors as possible.
The registry is particularly in need of people with mixed ethnic heritage for many other potential recipients without a match.
Registry officials said the thousands of new donations were more ethnically diverse than average.