Swab inside of your mouth for cancer patients

I’M WRITING to ask a favour.

I work closely with the blood cancer charity DKMS, who recruit blood stem cell donors to help people with blood cancer.

This charity is close to my heart. Last year, my six-year old nephew Finley was diagnosed with juvenile myelomonocytic leukaemia, a rare and aggressive form of childhood leukaemia, affecting around one to two children out of a million each year.

He needed to find his ‘genetic twin’ who could be his lifesaving blood stem cell donor.

Since Covid-19 arrived in the UK, the number of people coming forward to register as donors has substantially dropped.

This will impact on people with blood cancer now, and in the near future.

Their lives will be at great risk if more people don’t come forward now.

More than ever, we need people to register as potential life savers. While most of us are at home and dealing with the adjustments, we can only begin to under stand the challenge of a patient with blood cancer.

Building on the outbreaks of great kindness in our communities, can I ask: go to dkms.org.uk and order your home swab kit.

You don’t have to go near a GP or hospital and the kit will be sent to you.

Just swab the inside of your mouth and when you’re out buying your essentials, pop it in a post box and DKMS will do the rest.

There aren’t any risks to your own health and you could be a potential future lifesaver.

The Covid-19 crisis has shown us all just how precious our health is and for people with blood cancer, it is even more fragile.

So please, if you’re between 17 and 55 and in general good health, take the first step to register as a blood stem cell donor by ordering your home swab kit at dkms.org.uk.

Al Murray, comedian