CAMARILLO : Celebration Calls for Marrow Donors

There are about 1,500 people in Ventura County who have been tested and registered as possible donors for life-saving bone marrow transplants. And sponsors of the third annual Celebration in the Park in Camarillo hope they will be able to help increase that number next weekend.

Although the third annual event has a serious side to it, there will be clowns, magicians and musicians to entertain those who attend from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 1. Food will be served by the Pleasant Valley Lions Club, with all profits going to the Life-Savers Foundation of America.

The driving force behind the event is Lynnette Chandler, regional coordinator for the Life-Savers Foundation. Four years ago doctors diagnosed Chandler’s daughter, Amanda, with aplastic anemia. The potentially fatal disease can be cured with a bone marrow transplant, but no suitable donor has been found.

For now, Amanda, 11, is being treated with steroids that are holding the disease at bay. But for her--and thousands of others nationwide--the best hope rests with finding someone with a bone marrow that closely matches her own. Bone marrow transplants are also used to treat diseases such as leukemia, breast cancer and lymphoma.

Chandler, who founded the Ventura County branch of Life-Savers two years ago, volunteers full time to increase the number of registered donors. In the 2 1/2 years since the national foundation’s inception, the national registry of donors has jumped from 17,000 to 250,000.

“I didn’t even know what bone marrow was before,” Chandler said. “That is the unfortunate thing about this--people wait until there is a crisis in their family to do something about this.”

At the Camarillo event, Chandler hopes several hundred people will pay the $75 needed to be tested for the registry. Those who do not want to pay the fee are encouraged to add their names to a list of people who will be tested with donated money, Chandler said.