ACLT Donor Drive

Could You Be My Match?

03:43

Find out more about the ACLT donor drive at Global Radio.

On Saturday 14th March, from 12pm to 6pm, there will be a donor drive at Capital XTRA's headquarters in Leicester Square, London, where ACLT will be registering new potential bone marrow donors aged 17 to 55. African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust (ACLT) charity specialises in recruiting bone marrow, blood and organ donors from diverse ethnic minority communities to UK donor registries towards the international donor search.

Currently the ACLT are working on a campaign to recruit younger Caribbean people aged 16-30 to the UK Stem cell register. There is an urgent need for more potential donors to sign up, because if you are African Caribbean and need a stem cell transplant, you have less than a 20% chance of finding the best possible match.

Potential donors will be asked to sign up and give a simple cheek swab within just 15 minutes. The teams will explain how a stem cell donation is much like blood donation and is an easy way to have an immeasurable impact on somebody's life.

When And Where?

Saturday 14th March from 12pm to 6pm

Global Radio Capital XTRA
Capital Building
30 Leicester Square
London
WC2H 7LA

Why Get Involved?

Less than one per cent of the 800,000 donors on the UK registry are Black African Caribbean, African or Black mixed race. Alas, there are no bone marrow registries in the Caribbean. UK donors are the key.

• There is currently a 1 in 100,000 chance of African Caribbean people finding a unrelated bone marrow donor match compared to 1 in 5 if they were White British.
• Currently there are over 21 million potential donors on the world bone marrow registries. In the UK; 0.4 per cent (68,400) are of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) heritage.
• Ethnic origin is important when matching donors and patients. Thousands of genes determine our bone marrow tissue types. They are inherited and relate to your ethnic groups. African-Caribbean people are genetically diverse, the greatest chance of finding a donor match within their own ethnic group.
• Currently less than one per cent of UK blood donors and organ donors are Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) heritage.

You can find out more information about ACLT at www.aclt.org.