Bone Marrow: Donors

(asked on 22nd March 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to promote bone marrow donations during the covid-19 outbreak.


Answered by
Helen Whately Portrait
Helen Whately
Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 30th March 2021

NHS Blood and Transplant’s British Bone Marrow Registry has continued to recruit blood donors as potential stem cell donors after a brief pause at the start of the pandemic. They have exceeded the annual target for new donors for the past year and aim to double the number of donors added in this coming year to 30,000.

In 2020-21, the Department’s stem cell programme provided funding of £620,000 including recruitment and genotyping of prospective donors from ethnic minority backgrounds and supporting the use of the cord blood stem cell bank. In 2020, Anthony Nolan was awarded £315,000 from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport voluntary sector scheme to support stem cell donations, stem cell transplants and blood cancer patient’s wellbeing during the pandemic.

Reticulating Splines