Urszula Jaworska Urszula Jaworska was born in February

Urszula Jaworska

� Urszula Jaworska was born in February. She was the first Polish patient to receive a bone marrow transplanted from an unrelated donor. The procedure was carried out in 1997 in Clinics of Hematology of Silesian Medical Academy in Katowice under supervision of Prof. Hołowiecki. Before the operation Urszula Jaworska had been a patient of the Warsaw Institute of Hematology in Warsaw and it was there that the donor for her was found. She was a 45 -years old Dutch, mother of five. In the country, there was only one bone marrow donor registry with few people recorded. The chances to find a Polish donor were close to zero. After a successful transplantation Ursula Jaworska - a dancer in Mazowsze (the most renowned Polish folk-dance group), Ballet Group "Sabat" and "Syrena" Theatre - decide to set up a Foundation under her name to help people put in a situation as dramatic as her own once was. That is how - in October, 1997 - the Ursula Jaworska Foundation - Registry of Bone Marrow Donors was brought into life, which is today the dynamically functioning institution of that kind in Poland.

Urszula Jaworska Foundation is the largest - as far as the number of persons recorded - Registry of Bone Marrow Donors in Poland. At present, it associates more than 12 000 donors. It is also the only registry in the country that can boast 28 successful transplantations of bone-marrow from donors recorded by the Foundation already carried out and many more matches of donors with identical HLA for Polish patients. The main aim of the Urszula Jaworska Foundation's activity is to help people suffering from leukemia and other blood diseases, to conduct educational and informative action in mass-media, concerning creation of Bone Marrow Donors Registrys and the procedure of transplantation of bone marrow, and - in the first place - getting in touch with potential bone marrow donors.

Urszula Jaworska a year after the transplantation