Andalusia had recorded 3,143 bone marrow donor registrations so far in 2026, more than 76% of the 4,112 reported for all of 2025. Antonio Sanz, the region’s first vice-president and minister for the presidency, health and emergencies, cited the figures in connection with World Marrow Donor Day on 22 September, thanking donors and praising the work of professionals at the region’s transfusion, tissue and cell centres to raise awareness of donation.
Sanz said Andalusia continued to be the Spanish autonomous community contributing the most donors to the National Bone Marrow Plan, accounting for 23% of donors nationwide. The release says 4,182 new donors joined the network in 2025 and more than 3,000 Andalusians had been added to the Spanish Bone Marrow Donor Registry (REDMO) in 2026, an average of 380 new donors per month. It reports 121,194 registered donors in Andalusia who are available to donate if a compatible patient is found anywhere in the world. Nearly 535 additional applicants were awaiting confirmation after their requests and blood tests had been received.
At midyear, Málaga led the provinces with 751 registrations, followed by Seville with 417, Huelva with 329, Almería with 203, Granada with 194, Cádiz with 153, Córdoba with 121 and Jaén with 108. The average age of registered donors in Spain is 40, while the average age of donors added in 2025 was 27. Men make up 33% of registered donors and women 67%; however, seven in every ten effective donors are men. The release says this highlights the need to attract more male donors.
Andalusia carried out 630 bone marrow transplants in 2025, according to the release: 305 autologous transplants, using the patient’s own stem cells, and 295 allogeneic transplants, using cells from a donor. Among the allogeneic procedures, 151 people—including 13 children—received donations from unrelated donors through REDMO. The release says these patients would not have been able to receive transplants without donations from Spanish and other countries’ donors. Bone marrow transplants are often the only effective treatment for leukaemias, lymphomas and other blood disorders. Only 25–30% of patients needing an allogeneic transplant have a compatible family member. The average time to find a donor has fallen substantially over the past decade and is now 26 days.
REDMO has operated since 1991 under the management of the Josep Carreras Foundation, in coordination with Spain’s National Transplant Organisation and the autonomous communities. It is linked to international donor registries. If no compatible family member is available, the registry searches nationally and internationally; donor information is made available through the World Marrow Donor Association. The Andalusian Health Service says appeals for donations for individual patients are not effective, as registered donors are available to compatible patients worldwide.
People aged 18 to 40 can join the donor registry. Andalusia’s reference centres are part of the Andalusian Transfusion Medicine, Tissue and Cell Network. The Málaga centre performs HLA typing for the region’s marrow donors before their details are entered in REDMO. The release says effective donations by Andalusian donors rose from five in 2012, when the National Bone Marrow Plan began, to 62 in 2025.
Andalusia also holds 20,968 umbilical cord blood units, 34.5% of Spain’s total of 60,897. In 2025, Spanish banks sent 52 cord blood units for transplant: nine for patients in Spain and 43 for patients abroad. The Málaga public cord blood bank distributed units to national and international hospitals and was the country’s second-largest distributor, after Catalonia’s bank.