Note: This article is in Russian. After opening the page you should see a pop-up that asks "Translate this page?" Click on the "Translate" button to read the article in English. [translated] A descendant of people from the Grodno area searched for a marrow donor for four years, risking death. In 1994, an advertisement appeared in the Belarusian newspapers: they were looking for a donor for the American guy Jay Feinberg.

Adena Philips was 11 when the founders of the bone marrow registry organization Gift of Life came to speak at her synagogue in Toronto. Too young to join the registry herself, she started selling pens to raise money for the organization. While working as a consultant at Deloitte about 10 years later, she was approached by a friend to do a side project for a nonprofit organization. She asked which one it was and when she heard the name, she had to say yes. It was Gift of Life.

While many gifts are given with unselfish intentions, only one gift can be commended for total altruism. Gift of Life Marrow Registry enables those who are able to give, connect with those who need. You might not have heard of them referred to as "general blood cancers" before, but leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma – all originating in blood and bone marrow – were responsible for almost 10% of deaths from cancer in 2018.

Health Beat's Kathryn Davis interviews Gift of Life Marrow Registry's Founder and CEO, Jay Feinberg, who is also a marrow transplant survivor.

Michele Rudd says she wouldn’t be here if not for the selfless act of a college student who volunteered to swab his cheek. That cheek swab eventually led to a life-saving bone marrow transplant for the 46-year-old Leslie mother of four. Rudd got to meet the donor, Jakob Gillberg, 28, of Allston, Massachusetts, at a celebration by the Gift of Life Marrow Registry in Boston in early May.

Woodmere resident Dr. Adam Lish was not at Citi Field on May 20 just to watch his beloved New York Mets play the Washington Nationals. He was also there to reunite with a special individual. Lish and Brian Veith, 24, of Burlington, Conn., reconnected after 15 years, when Lish donated his bone marrow to the then 9-year-old Veith, who had immune disorder, familial erythrocytosis lymphohistiocytosis. The reunion was through the Gift of Life Marrow Registry.