Roche Diagnostics Sponsors Five Points of Life Ride

Indianapolis, Indiana - August 20, 2002 - Roche Diagnostics is proud to be a corporate sponsor of the 2002 Five Points of Life Ride (FPOL). The Five Points of Life is a program of LifeSouth Community Blood Centers, a not-for-profit community blood center serving Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. The FPOL is a cross-country bicycle ride to increase the national awareness of the need for people who wish to share life with others through the donation of whole blood, apheresis, bone marrow, cord blood, and organ and tissue.

The FPOL team members will spend seven weeks on bicycles, traveling from International Falls, Minnesota, to St. Petersburg, Florida. Each team member, selected through a national application process, has a personal story about how donation has affected his or her life. Every team member is a blood donor, but each story is different. Together they provide a compelling vision of how donations, or the lack of a donation, can affect lives. These stories will be shared at more than 50 blood drives and donor awareness events organized by local donor organizations in the nine states visited during the ride.

For the past several years, LifeSouth Community Blood Centers and the South African National Blood Service have used bicycle tours to recruit new blood donors and raise awareness of the need for a safe, adequate blood supply. This year for the first time the two groups united in the cause by exchanging riders from each country. The ride will begin September 1, 2002, in International Falls, Minnesota, and end on October 19, 2002 in Tampa Bay, Florida

Additional information about becoming a donor is available through the following national donor organizations. For blood and apheresis donations, contact the American Association of Blood Banks at www.aabb.org or 800-458-9388; for organ and tissue donation contact the Coalition on Donation at www.shareyourlife.org or 800-355- SHARE; and for marrow and cord blood donation contact the National Marrow Donor Program at www.marrow.org or 800-MARROW-2.

Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is one of the world's leading research-oriented healthcare groups in the fields of pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, and vitamins. Roche's innovative products and services address needs for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, thus enhancing people's well being and quality of life. Roche's Diagnostics Division supplies a wide array of innovative testing products and services to researchers, physicians, patients, hospitals, and laboratories worldwide. Roche Molecular Diagnostics, a business area of Roche Diagnostics, has made the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) the leading DNA probe technology in the world. PCR technology allows minute amounts of genetic material to be amplified into billions of copies in just a few hours. PCR nucleic acid amplification-based test kits for clinical diagnostics are marketed under the trade name AMPLICOR®, and blood screening assays under the trade name COBAS AmpliScreen® and AMPLINAT™ MPX. Roche Diagnostics' website is located at www.roche-diagnostics.com.