LETTER: Could you consider helping someone with blood cancer?

I’m writing to ask a favour from you in these very difficult times. I work closely with the blood cancer charity DKMS, who recruit blood stem cell donors to help people with blood cancer.

This charity is close to my heart. Last year, my six-year old nephew Finley was diagnosed with JMML (juvenile myelomonocytic leukaemia), a rare and aggressive form of childhood leukaemia, affecting around one to two children out of a million each year. He needed to find his ‘genetic twin’ who could be his lifesaving blood stem cell donor, so I got involved with DKMS’s work.

Since Covid-19 arrived in the UK, the number of people coming forward to register as donors has substantially dropped. This will impact significantly on people with blood cancer now, and in the near future. Their lives will be at great risk if more people don’t come forward now.

More than ever, we need people to register as potential life savers.

While most of us are at home and dealing with the necessary adjustments, we can only begin to understand the challenge of a patient with blood cancer. Building on the outbreaks of great kindness in our communities, can I ask one thing of you? Go to dkms.org.uk and order your home swab kit. You don’t have to go near a GP or hospital and the kit will be sent to you. Just swab the inside of your mouth and when you’re out buying your essentials, pop it in a post box and DKMS will do the rest.

I know we are all thinking about our own health at the moment but there aren’t any risks to your own health by swabbing and you could be a potential life saver in the future.

The Covid-19 crisis has shown us all just how precious our health is and for people with blood cancer, it is even more fragile. So please, if you’re between 17 and 55 and in general good health, take the first step to register as a blood stem cell donor by ordering your home swab kit at dkms.org.uk.

Al Murray, on behalf of DKMS