Bone marrow transplantation (BMT) has become the treatment of choice for patients with haematological and immunodeficiency diseases. Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) matching for bone marrow donors and recipients is crucial for the success of BMT. HLA matched related donors are available for only 20-30% of the patients. The introduction of newer molecular tissue typing techniques has contributed significantly in search for unrelated volunteers as safe potential donors. This has advanced the cause of development of BMT registry and enhanced the probability of findings fully HLA matched unrelated donors. This study presents retrospective analysis of tissue typing data of 607 prospective BMT patients and their relatives performed between 1993-2005 at our immunology department. Matched related donors were found for 45.3% of patients inour study. The reported international ratio isis 30%. Thus no matched related donors could be found for 54.7% of patients. Availability of higher than the international proportion of matched related donors in our study is possibly related to the widely practiced custom of consanguineous marriage among Kuwaitis and larger average number of children in extended families. However, since for a quite significant number of patients a matched related donor could not be found, the need for establishing a BMT registry in Kuwait is highly recommendable to help in search for matching unrelated donors for the prospective recipients for whom a matched related donor is not available.