For more than 30 years, Deutsche Telekom has been a trusted partner of the German Bone Marrow Donor Center (DKMS) in the fight against blood cancer. DKMS is an international nonprofit organization that aims to give as many people with blood cancer as possible around the world a second chance at life.
To date, more than 18,000 Telekom employees have registered and been added to the worldwide bone marrow donor database. This means they can save lives in an emergency by donating stem cells. Telekom covers the cost of registration for its employees and also offers the necessary registration drives at its work locations on a regular basis. By organizing donation and registration drives at their locations, many employees, from trainees to executives, have supported DKMS's work on a voluntary basis.
For many people with blood cancer, a stem cell or bone marrow donation is their only chance of survival. For a transplant to be successful, the donor’s and patient’s tissue characteristics must first be an almost complete match. Based on DKMS experience, around one in every 100 registered potential stem cell donors goes on to make a stem cell donation. Without initial tissue typing, however, it is not possible to determine whether the tissue characteristics of donors and recipients may match. That is why DKMS has made it an ongoing goal to raise awareness of how valuable tissue typing can be for the lives of others if a matching bone marrow donation is needed someday.
With this in mind, Deutsche Telekom is committed to raising awareness of this important issue among its own employees and supporting DKMS as a long-term, reliable partner.
Founded in 1991, the German Bone Marrow Donor Center has more than 12 million registered donors (as of December 2023), making it the world’s largest stem cell donor registry. To date, the organization has facilitated more than 110,000 stem cell donations, including more than 200 by Telekom employees. In addition to Germany, DKMS is active in the United States, Poland, the UK, Chile, India, and South Africa. Telekom held its first workplace donor registration event as early as 1994. In 2024, Telekom celebrates the 30th anniversary of its partnership with DKMS.
