Having her first daughter was an incredible experience for Chelsey Hugelshofer. Her act of giving went beyond birth; she also donated her cord blood.

“If you can be that needle in a haystack to save someone’s life, why wouldn’t you?” said Hugelshofer.

Cord blood is the stem cell-rich blood that’s found in the placenta and umbilical cord, and it can be used in sensitive transfusions to treat serious blood and immune system diseases when treatments like chemotherapy fail.

“It was something so easy, a total no-brainer, to donate something that is normally medical waste that can be used to save somebody’s life.”

The BC Women’s Hospital is one of just four maternity wards in the country that can accept donations, which are then tested, frozen, and stored until someone with an illness such as leukemia needs them.

Dr. Matthew Seftel leads the Canadian Blood Services stem cell team. He says cord blood donations largely go towards children, and they’ve been able to bank about 5,000 units so far with international agreements that allow access to 10s of thousands more. However, it’s far from enough.

“So those cells can be transferred to a matched recipient, and they are somewhat amazingly capable of finding their way into the bone marrow, and growing, and basically becoming a whole new blood system,” said Seftel.

“There is absolutely an ongoing need, especially for patients who are not of white ancestry.”

Stem cell matches are largely dependent on genetics, so the more unique your background, the harder it is to find the perfect donor, which can keep patients waiting longer for critical transplants. It’s something Hugelshofer is acutely aware of, being of both Asian and European descent.

“And now that I have a daughter who’s even more mixed race, I know the chances of her having a match are gonna be really slim, so if there’s somebody out there that has something similar with our ethnicities, I’m hoping that by us being in the cord blood bank, it’s going to help them,” said Hugelshofer.

Expecting mothers who wish to donate can sign up online at www.blood.ca.