Academy pupils champion fire service charity partnership

Senior Forfar Academy pupils have become the latest young ambassadors for a lifesaving partnership project involving the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the Anthony Nolan blood cancer charity.

The lecture theatre at the £39 million Forfar Community Campus will tomorrow host a public donor registration event in the latest stage of a link which has led to thousands of potential stem cell donors signing up at recruitment sessions across the country.

The main focus of the initiative is to educate young people about the desperate need for stem cell donors and a group of academy pupils have stepped up to join the list of partnership ‘champions’ who then help to organise the recruitment event and pass the message around their peer group.

The hope is that fellow pupils will be keen to add their names to the Anthony Nolan register, with the recruitment event also open to members of the public.

They should be aged 16 to 30 and of good health, with the community campus session running from 9.30am to 1.30pm.

When a patient with blood cancer or a blood disorder needs a stem cell transplant, the charity searches its register for a genetic match.

Nine out of 10 people donate their stem cells via the bloodstream, in a straightforward process called peripheral blood stem cell collection, whilst one in 10 donors will have them collected via the bone marrow itself, under general anaesthetic.

The award-winning fire service partnership was initiated in 2008 and has led to a number of lifesaving stem cell donations.