Cord Blood Banking Giveaway for Cord Blood Awareness Month

In celebration of July being Cord Blood Awareness Month, ViaCord is giving away a free cord blood banking service to one expecting family. Recognized by the National Health Information Center (NHIC), July is all about raising awareness and educating parents about the value that cord blood has in stem cell treatments and research.

After birth, a baby’s umbilical cord is clamped and cut before it is generally disposed of as medical waste. For many families, they may have never considered cord blood banking, whether it’s a donation to a public bank or by storing it in a private bank.  Cord Blood Awareness Month is meant to help educate parents on this choice and the benefits that cord blood stem cells could provide for their child or a sibling. For example, cord blood stem cells are shown to be a better source of stem cells for use in transplants than bone marrow and can be used to treat nearly 80-life threatening disease.

With ViaCord, your child’s cord blood will be stored exclusively for your family. If the stem cells are needed for treatment, the child whom the blood was stored from will be an exact match. For a sibling, transplants using cord blood from a family member are nearly twice as successful as transplants using cord blood from a non-relative (i.e. public source).¹

To enter for your chance to win simply ‘Like’ ViaCord’s Facebook page and take a one-question survey. You can even gain an additional entry by sharing the survey with your friends on Twitter!  The cord blood banking prize includes ViaCord’s cord blood collection kit, shipping and processing of the cord blood, and the first year storage for a single birth (valued around $2,250). There can be one survey entry per person and a winner will be randomly drawn at the conclusion of the giveaway period. To learn more, read the official rules here.

ViaCord is a private cord blood bank that collects, processes, and stores your baby’s cord blood stem cells exclusively for your family. Cord blood is a source of non-controversial stem cells that are used today to treat nearly 80-life threatening diseases*. By storing your baby’s cord blood, there is the potential to use the stem cells for the child or a sibling in stem cell treatments should the need arise.

REFERENCES

1  Gluckman, et al. New England Journal of Medicine, 1997; 337:373

Although the potential use of umbilical cord blood is expanding rapidly, the odds that family member without a defined risk will need to use their child’s umbilical cord blood are low. There is no guarantee that the umbilical cord blood will be a match for a family member or will provide a cure. Autologous cord blood stem cells will not guarantee suitable treatment for all inherited genetic diseases. As with any transplant therapy, therapeutic success depends upon many factors beyond the stem cells themselves including patient condition, type of disease, recipient-donor relationship and matching, and other factors. The use of cord blood stem cells for emerging treatments is experimental.