The Anthony Nolan charity visited Norbury Manor Business and Enterprise College for Girls (NMBEC) and gave the pupils of the school an assembly on their charity that focuses on blood cancer and stem cell donation to possibly save a blood cancer patients life the assembly which gave everyone an insight to the possibilities of being a stem cell donor.
The charity later returned on 28th November to recruit potential stem cell, and I signed up with Anthony Nolan to be a stem cell donor via a process in which I was asked to give a cheek cell sample by inserting, what looks to be, two cotton swabs on each side of my inner cheek and give a good rub for 30 seconds. Once the swab was taken it was left to dry and during that period I was asked to fill out a consent and agreement form. That’s the process of signing up done, you will now stay on the register till the age of 60 and you can be asked to donate stem cells either via blood (90% chance) or by bone marrow (10% chance) anytime if you’re between the ages of 16-30 and if your stem cells are a match for a patient .
After signing up I interviewed the staff there to help me understand more about the work of this charity and I asked them questions like ‘what are the aims of the charity’ to which they responded ‘we would like to raise awareness about the need of donors that are Black, Asian or of other minorities and we would encourage people to become donors as it gives a person with a life-threatening illness possibility to recover’.
