DKMS and supporters celebrate a very successful weekend
A HUGE thank you to everyone who supported us!
Over the weekend of 16-17 September, to mark Blood Cancer Awareness Month, DKMS partnered with families across England to run online and in-person stem cell donor registration drive events and campaigns.
A network of events
Across the country DKMS staff, Swab to Save a Child supporters, friends and volunteers joined forces to recruit vital new potential donors, willing to offer a second chance at life to people with blood cancer or other blood disorders. They joined other families also working with DKMS to encourage online registration, including Sofia, mum to 11-year-old Amelie, who has sadly been diagnosed with leukaemia for the third time in her short life, and now urgently needs a transplant.
There was also considerable interest from journalists in the weekend’s events, with coverage by BBC Breakfast, ITV Anglia and ITV Granada News, the Guardian, Mirror Online, Voice of Islam Radio, the Liverpool Echo, Coventry Telegraph, Sheffield Star, Kent Online, Hackney Gazette, Northamptonshire Telegraph and many more local newspapers.
A donor for Francis
On Saturday, DKMS joined with the family of baby Francis, to host an event in Bootle, Merseyside. Francis was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia at just 15 weeks old.
Family friend Lacey Jones, who was one of the co-organisers of Saturday's event said: "It went absolutely amazingly. Me and the other girls who organised the drive kept looking at each other in disbelief throughout the day, so many people turned up. A huge thank you to everyone who came and registered, and it was particularly great to see so many young people getting involved.”
Within days Francis’ mum Anna shared the wonderful news that a match has now been found for him, and issued a heart-felt thank you. Writing on Instagram she said: "If this weekend couldn’t get any better we’ve just found out that Francis has ‘multiple 10/10 matches'."
Swab to Save a Child
Sunday saw 14 simultaneous events, hosted as far apart as Liverpool and Crawley, in venues and car parks across England. For these events, DKMS partnered with campaigner Sarah Cripps, who led a group of mothers, all with children who have received a leukaemia diagnosis, to take the search for potential stem cell donors to their local areas.
In-person and online registering
Online virtual drives for Swab to Save a Child, Francis and Amelie gave anyone unable to attend the weekend's events in person an alternative way to register.
Everything adds up to a very successful weekend
By the end of Monday 18 September, sharing of Amelie’s story on DKMS social media channels resulted in 462 people joining its stem cell register, and later DKMS confirmed that over the whole weekend, over 3500 new potential donors had signed up.
Our mission is an essential and continuing one: we could not achieve anything without our donors, patients and their families, volunteers and supporters. Thank you so much to everyone!
