Why won’t my health insurance pay for me to be typed?

Health insurance funds in Germany do not cover the costs for registering new blood stem cell donors, as this is not their remit according to the German social security statute book V (Sozialgesetzbuch V, SGB V). They only cover the cost of services and treatment received by a named patient. So DKMS has to rely on monetary donations instead to continue registering new donors.

However, the health insurance funds do support us with tasks such as maintaining our database — because a high standard of data, including up-to-date addresses is very important for our work.