Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps the Government is taking to increase the level of stem cell donations by people of mixed ethnicity.

The Department is supporting the provision of stem cells for patients through our key delivery partners, Anthony Nolan and NHS Blood and Transplant. They continue to specifically recruit adult bone marrow donors from the Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities and we have agreed with them a target to recruit at least 3,000 new adult male bone marrow donors from the BAME community this year.

It is difficult to find a perfectly matched donor for patients of mixed ethnicity, and for this reason the Department has continued to support the collection of cord blood stem cells. Cord blood stem cells are more tolerant of minor mis-matches and therefore particularly important to patients unable to find a suitable adult bone marrow donor.

The Department continues to support the National BAME Transplant Alliance with the aim of raising awareness about the need for stem cell and organ donation, increasing the number of people from a BAME background on the bone marrow and organ donation registers and increasing the number of people from BAME communities who can benefit from either a stem cell or organ transplant.