HEALTH

Patients with blood cancers have struggled to find donors in the UK but it looks like that could be slowly changing.

Data from campaign group DKMS shows 43% of patients with blood cancer or blood disorders received stem cells from UK donors, up 3% since 2014. Some would argue that is slow progress and it comes as MPs are consulting on a new organ donation law backed by the Mirror to change to “presumed consent”.

Almost 172,000 new stem cell donors were added to the UK stem cell register in 2017.

Men under 30 make up 70% of transplants needed, but are just 12% of the register.

Mechanic Sean Parsons, 26, from Swanley, Kent, signed the register three months before being identified as a potential match. He said: “You get a swab kit through your front door, it’s extremely easy.”

Leading mental health experts have outlined factors which could be contributing to increasing levels of depression and anxiety among the young. Labelling millennials the “snowflake generation” is unfair they said, pointing to potential causes of the rise including poor diet, pollution or increasing premature births.

Experts gathering for the British Association for Psychopharmacology summer meeting also pointed at stress caused by lack of money and career prospects.

Machines that jump-start the heart when someone collapses are being wasted because potential lifesavers don’t know where they are kept.

The Government has spent at least £2 million installing defibrillators at sports centres, GP surgeries, shopping centres and village halls.

Southampton University and South Central Ambulance Service found some staff in charge of them had no idea where they were or even what they were for. More than

MARTIN BAGOT is the Mirror’s Health Correspondent