Meg backs campaign for BME bone marrow donors

Leukaemia patients from black and minority ethnic communities are being severely disadvantaged due to a scarcity of donors. Currently there are around 285,000 registered potential bone marrow donors in the UK. Only around 550 are black or mixed race.

Due to the fact that bone marrow contains racially specific characteristics, compatible donors only be found within the same ethnic community.

Although there are over 10 million volunteer donors on bone marrow registries worldwide, the Indian register holds fewer than 1,000 people. Outside of Europe and North America, there are fewer than 800,000 listed donors – from any ethnicity.

Meg has recently been alerted to the case of seven year old Keiton Knight who has an extremely rare form of leukaemia and has only been given weeks to live by doctors.

Keiton is mixed race and has a very rare tissue type. His donor must also be mixed race and have a black father and white mother or black mother and white father.

A global search of official registers has proven unsuccessful so far and time is running out, with doctors predicting Keiton only has up to eight weeks to find a donor. Potential donors should contact the Anthony Nolan Trust hotline 0901 88 222 34 or click on www.anthonynolan.org.uk or the African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust www.aclt.org.uk.