Blood cancers are some of the most prolific and also difficult cancers to treat, however, developments in stem cell research have continued to provide more ways in which to save a life. The facts around this are a little scary….

• In the UK, around 40,000 people are diagnosed with blood cancer every year. This equates to one person every 14 minutes.

• In the UK, around 2,300 people need a stem cell transplant from an unrelated donor every year.

• Only 2% of people in the UK are registered as stem cell donors.

Chappo was one of the fortunate ones, he had a sibling match and didn’t have to rely on the donor list, however so many don’t have the same chance, in fact 7 out of 10 people that need a transplant don’t have a family match.

One of the major goals of the Leukathon is to support this important area of medicine by both funding research but also bringing awareness to the donor registers.

To be eligible in Australia you must be under 35, or in the UK under 30. If you are eligible, we urge you to please join the donor register. For someone with blood cancer or a blood disorder, an amazing stranger donating their stem cells could be their best chance of survival. If you sign up to the stem cell register and one day come up as a genetic match, you could be that amazing stranger. The process of joining the register is very straight forward, both of the partners below provide swab kits which will take about 5min of your time to complete and send in. More details are provided below.

If you’re not eligible, then you can help us bring awareness by encouraging those around you to join. Raise it at work, talk to people around you, help us add as many potential donors as we can. Let’s ensure nobody who can be saved, goes without.

For those in the UK:

The donor register is managed by our fundraising partner, Anthony Nolan. In the UK, you must be 18-30yrs of age to be eligible to join the register. Research has shown that younger donors increase a patients’ chance of surviving.

For more information and next steps please follow this link.

For those in Australia:

The current situation in Australia is very challenging for stem cell donation. In fact, 80% of Australians who require an unrelated match from the donor registry, must go overseas to find a donor. This we MUST change.

One of the organisations leading the charge on this is called Strength to Give. They have developed a swab based test, which is not currently the main source of donation in Australia, but is elsewhere in the world.

Please follow this link to learn more about how you could save a life.