I received the following email message yesterday from the Anthony Nolan Stem Cell Register

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We are pleased to inform you that you appear to be a potential match for a patient requiring a stem cell transplant, and would be most grateful if you could provide blood samples to verify this match. As a registered Anthony Nolan donor you are eligible to continue to be tested and to donate until your 60^th birthday.

I had initially signed up to the register about 7 years ago during the Rik Basra Leukaemia Campaign. A couple of years later I also helped promote the Gaurav Bains Campaign. And since then I’ve tried my best to promote many more campaigns especially within my own BAME community.

Last year saw the highest ever number of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people register as stem cell donors, according to a new report which shines a light on the inequalities which remain for BAME patients in need of donors. The annual review from Anthony Nolan and NHS Blood and Transplant, From Strength to Strength, reveals that BAME people made up 23% (42,326) of new registered adults on the UK donor register, which rose by 185,000 in 2016 to almost 1.3 million.

It’s great to see the register numbers increasing especially in the BAME community. Since I joined the register I have seen firsthand on many occasions how family and friends mobilise and come together to try and save the life of a loved one. After all that effort to try and get as many people as possible to join the stem cell donor register. How unbelievably rewarding it must be to find a match against what feels like unsurmountable odds at the time.

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I hope that now that I have been identified as a potential match I can also do my little bit to help save a life. Fingers crossed that all goes well and ‘potential match’ become ‘confirmed match’.