Do you have a grandparent, parent or great-grandparent who was born outside the UK ?

WE NEED YOU

This page is a call-out to cure illnesses of leukaemia, myeloma and lymphoma which depend on donations of blood to save lives.

If you have ancestors from more than one country, you have a mix of blood-cell types that can help other people with the same mix.

In all countries, not just the UK, both blood banks and blood-stem-cell registers have insufficient resources to cure people.
But this is a solvable problem,
all it takes is someone with diverse ancestry (like you?) to register to donate.

THE PROBLEM
As yet, relatively few people with multiple nationalities in their ancestry (for example people who are referred to as ‘Diverse’ and ‘Minority Ethnic’) have registered to donate.
This means that people with multiple nationalities in their ancestry are not getting life-saving treatment.
Currently, the odds of finding a good match of stem-cells from a stranger (a Matched Unrelated Donor MUD) are around…
80% if you are of a white mono-ethnicity ancestry, and
20% if you are of a ‘Diverse’ or ‘Minority Ethnic’ ancestry.
This is not good, for very many people.
And yes, that means that one person is twice as likely as another to find stem-cells which match theirs – which one are you?
Which one is the person you care for?
(click here for the source of these statistics)

STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD
Our healthcare does not represent all people, equally and we need to correct this and ensure that our blood banks and blood-stem-cell registers are as diverse as we are:
some people feel uncomfortable about drawing attention to the parts of them that have diverse ancestry, and this might be one of the factors that explains why they have not offered to register as donors.
But equally, the lack of equality of our blood banks and blood-stem-cell registers can be caused by professional attitudes that suffer from racial bias and failure to understand that their services must reach all people, equally.
Please register to donate – here’s how:

STEP by STEP – REGISTER
You are registering to be a donor, offering to give a small quantity of your blood cells in case someone with the same cell-types as you needs treatment for a blood-related illness.
Currently, only 1 out of every 800 people who register is actually asked to donate.
Although this might make you think it’s not worth registering, the point is that we need a lot of people to register in order to find the right match between donor and patient (the more ‘diverse’ the ancestry, the more difficult it is to find a match).
Registering takes up to six weeks and really is simple:
1 – click this link to register, and you will be sent a small envelope containing a swab kit,
2 – give your unique swab sample (rub the cotton bud inside your cheek – simpler than brushing your teeth – you don’t even have to fill out a form),
3 – return the swab pre-paid envelope,
and the lab will process your swab and upload you details, and you will be a registered donor (thank you).

STEP by STEP – SPEAK OUT
Pass the word
Share the link for this page with your friends and family
Explain the problem
Ask your friends to ‘Stand out from the Crowd’
Share the link to register

STEP by STEP – DONATE
After you register, you might be asked to donate (1 out of every 800 registered people).
This used to be called ‘donating your bone-marrow’ and was considered to be a difficult thing to do, but science has moved on and nowadays, it is called being a ‘blood stem-cell donor’:
90% of donations are made by conventional blood transfusion and
10% by blood donation through local or general anaesthetic.
You donate a very small percentage of your blood-cells and are treated as a VIP by the lovely nurses and doctors who genuinely value your time and blood-stem-cell donation and take great care of you, staying with you throughout your visit, explaining everything carefully and supplying lots and lots of tea and biscuits.
All travel expenses and a hotel (if you need one), as well as meals are paid for – there is NO financial cost to donors.
Afterwards, it is recommended to take a few hours to get your energy back before getting on with your day.
Your body quickly regenerates the level of blood stem cells and your immune system is not weakened.
(click here for the source of our info)

WHAT IS THE VALUE OF A DONATION?
Please take some time to imagine the gratitude of the patient who will receive your donation.
You are giving them your blood stem-cells so that they can have a new immune system.
This is the only way they can survive.
Their gratitude is too big to express here.
You are also contributing to a more fair world, in which people have equal healthcare, regardless of where their parents and grandparents were born.
And importantly, donors say they feel a new and great sense of pride.
Please register

THE SCIENCE
Young cells which grow to make up the blood are called stem-cells; these grow in our marrow inside our bones.
The marrow is our blood-factory.
Like a super-productive garage, making cars to travel around and service our body, our marrow is a busy factory, making hundreds of millions of stem-cells each DAY.
Stem-cells are made up of proteins.
The more nationalities in a person’s ancestry, the bigger the range, or more ‘diverse’ the proteins in their stem-cells.
(click here for the source of our info)

The page is produced in collaboration with parents whose children who have gone through the donor process – please consider what you would do if one of the people you love is denied life-saving treatment because some of their ancestors are from outside the UK.
Please register.

PLEASE CONTACT us at info@dasos.net