BEIJING, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- As of July, a total of 344 donations have been made through a blood stem cell donation program on the Chinese mainland to overseas patients, China Daily reported.
Recipients of the donations were from 28 countries and regions, including the United States, the Republic of Korea, Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the newspaper said, quoting statistics from the China Marrow Donor Program, a nonprofit organization that runs the national databank on donors under the Red Cross Society of China.
The number of registered hematopoietic stem cell donors on the Chinese mainland exceeded 2.6 million with 8,680 donations completed, according to the report.
The organization made the first international donation to a patient from the United States in 2004, and an increasing number of patients overseas have been saved after transplant surgeries with stem cells contributed by Chinese donors eversince, it said.
In the first seven months of this year, 27 international donations have been made by the organization, the newspaper said.
"Most of the receivers are of Chinese origin as hematopoietic stem cells from the same race are more likely to match," an official with the donor bank told the newspaper. "But there are some Caucasian receivers who have successful matches."
