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Blood cancer charity DKMS is seeking to team up with football
clubs up and down the UK in a bid to raise awareness of blood cancer, blood
stem cell donation and to register donors.
Football Vs Blood Cancer is a new campaign being run by DKMS to
build on the success it has already had working with football clubs such as
Everton.
Reason for campaign
A blood stem cell donation is the only chance of survival for many
blood cancer patients. Sadly, many patients will not find a matching donor.
This isn’t because a match doesn’t exist, it’s simply because
there aren’t enough people registered as donors. That is why DKMS works to
increase the size and diversity of the blood stem cell registry.
It has launched Football Vs Blood Cancer because younger people,
especially men, have a better chance of being chosen to donate, and it believes
that the football community is one the best places it can find lifesavers.
The diversity of the football community is important too as
patients are most likely to find a matching donor from a similar ethnic
background but often have difficulty in finding suitable donors.
DKMS has already successfully worked with the football community
when it held donor recruitment events and awareness raising activity with
Everton football club last year.
This was inspired by the search for a matching donor for Finn
McEwen, a little boy from Liverpool who needed a blood stem cell donation for
his survival.
A match was found for Finn, who is a huge Everton fan, and he
successfully received a blood stem cell donation last year.
Thousands of people registered as potential blood stem cell donors
because of DKMS and Everton’s work together
and it even led to a staff member of the club at the time donating some
of their blood stem cells to help save a critically ill patient.
Patrick Ryan, who is leading DKMS’s Football Vs Blood Cancer campaign,
said: “Football has a huge and passionate fan base and inspires those who
support it.
“In partnership with clubs of all sizes, we can reach a large
proportion of the general public who don’t yet know how easy it is to save a
life.
“We had huge success working with Everton last year. Thousands of
people registered as potential blood stem cell donors and amazingly a staff
member at the time was matched with a patient and gave them a second chance of
life by donating some of their blood stem cells.
“We want to build on that through the Football Vs Blood Cancer
campaign and find more lifesavers among the football community.”
Patrick wants clubs of all sizes to join the campaign and says
that they can take part in a variety of ways including giving people the chance
to register by holding match day swabbing events; raising awareness on social
media; promotion within match day programmes and stadium screens/billboards,
plus player/staff involvement.C
Source: FCbusiness
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