The launch of a new partnership between UK charity ‘Love Hope Strength Foundation’ (LHSF – which is now the world’s leading rock and roll cancer charity), and ‘Delete Blood Cancer UK’ (DBCUK) is guaranteed to save lives in the UK.
Current national figures show that half the people in Britain who need a life saving stem cell donor do not find a match and this new partnership between LHSF and Delete Blood Cancer UK will attempt to drastically alter that figure.By working together, the partnership hopes to significantly grow the number of UK donors and hugely improve the chances of patients in the UK (and worldwide), to find a matched donor by the introduction of DBCUK’s unique age brackets for donors (17-55), which means that British residents (many of whom who were previously ineligible), can now join the list of potential donors by simply filling in a consent form and giving a tissue sample through a cotton cheek swab. The whole process only takes up a few minutes to complete and is being introduced to the UK for the first time (having been proved incredibly successful in the USA and Germany). We further hope that the partnership will help raise awareness that being a stem cell donor in this day and age is almost as simple as giving blood and in most cases, virtually painless.
On June 4th LHSF and DBCUK are hosting a Parliamentary donor drive (aimed at UK Members of Parliament), in Room R at Portcullis House, Westminster between 2 and 6pm. The partnership are hoping that many MP’s who have been personally and publicly supportive of other campaigns in the past (for example that of the late Pride of Britain winner Alice Pyne’s heartfelt bone marrow donor campaign of 2011), will come forward to encourage all people in the UK to become potential stem cell donors and to give blood cancer patients in need of a donation a second chance at life.
LHSF was founded in the UK by Mike Peters (a two times cancer survivor), who is also lead singer with internationally renowned British rock bands (The Alarm and Big Country). In 2005, Mike Peters was diagnosed with Leukaemia (CLL), and set up LHSF to raise funds for his local cancer centre in North Wales and further afield, via musical expeditions to Mt. Everest, Kilimanjaro and Mt. Fuji, building cancer centres in Tanzania and Nepal for those less fortunate than ourselves in Britain, along the way. In 2010, LHSF partnered with Delete Blood Cancer in the USA and began hosting successful ‘Get On The List’ donor drives at music events all across America. (Over one thousand people recently signed up to ‘Get On The List’ during a trial run conducted at twenty eight concert dates in the UK by The Alarm and Big Country).
In three years, the partnership in the USA has inspired 35,000 new donors to join the registry (via LHSF) discovering over 500 potentially lifesaving matches. Delete Blood Cancer UK, is part of the DKMS Germany family of organisations worldwide and has recruited more than 3.4 million registered donors so far and given 36,000 patients a second chance of life.