An exciting new change has occurred to the way Australians can register to become blood stem cell donors. A simple cheek swab is now all you need to do to register through the Australian Bone Marrow Donor Registry’s ‘Strength to Give’ campaign.

For a small number of  MPN patients, the only possibility of prolonging survival is through a blood stem cell transplant. Many other blood cancer patients also benefit from stem cell transplants. Please ask your family, friends and their friends to consider becoming a donor.

The Strength to Give donor recruitment campaign is targeted towards younger male donors (18 to 30 years old) as young male donors typically result in better outcomes for patients and increases their overall chance at achieving a full recovery (unfortunately only 4% of the registry are young male donors). It is also important to attract donors from different ethnic backgrounds as patients are more likely to find a match with a donor from the same ethnic background. 

More information is available from the Strength to Give website at strengthtogive.org.au.