The Anthony Nolan Trust – ‘Give a Spit’ Campaign Membership to the Anthony Nolan Trust ‘Give a Spit’ Campaign takes just ten minutes! Peter Symonds College students and staff, aged between 16 and 30, were invited by members of Southampton University’s Marrow Group to give a few moments of their time during Health & Wellbeing Week to register their contact details and donate a saliva sample as part of the regional campaign to expand the charity’s donor base.

“The fifteen new members we signed up will be added to the national database,” says Lizzie Jones, President of Southampton Marrow, “along with the DNA results of their samples, once they have been processed.  This information will then be cross matched with those people, worldwide, who are currently waiting for a suitable match donor.”

Jack Plume adds, “We are delighted with the response we had from the students at Peter Symonds, especially as many of them were amongst ourmain target audience, young males. The charity particularly need more young men to sign up as they produce more stem cells than women and are six times more likely to donate, however they make up just 11% of our register.”
“Currently in the UK alone there are 1800 patients waiting to hear of a match, so this new group of recruits are very valuable to us and any one of them could well be saving a life very soon.”
He concludes, “We also need more donors from black and minority ethnic backgrounds as we often struggle to find donor matches for people in these groups.” 

Donors of any gender or ethnicity, within the 16-30 age range, can apply to the charity to register by following this link http://www.anthonynolan.org/node/261; they will then receive the
necessary documentation in the post to complete and return.

If a DNA match is found then, in 90% of cases, the process is as simple and quick as giving blood, as the necessary materials can be extracted from the blood.

As the list of those in need continues to increase so too does the charity’s need for new donors. So if you find yourself with a spare ten minutes ……
Older donors can also still help; anyone aged 30 up to 49 can register with the NHS British Bone Marrow Register when they next give blood.