While I was pregnant with Amber, I found a link to have cord blood collected and stored on several sites, but none in the UK that allowed donation - only a cryo srvice that saved it for your child only, in case they needed the cells at a later stage. I wanted to donate to help to save someones life, or to contribute to the research to help potentially save lots of lives in the future.
A breif explanation of what cord blood collection is, and why it is useful:
Currently the donation of cord blood for the national register is only available at 5 Hospitals in the UK. Cord blood would usually be thrown away but it could be used to save someone’s life. It is rich in stem cells and it is these stem cells that can be used to treat patients suffering from life threatening diseases like leukaemia. A cord blood transplant is an alternative to using bone marrow. Collecting this blood will not affect your delivery in any way (more information available from the national blood service website). Currently for collection of cord blood at other UK hospitals,the donor would have to pay a substantial amount of money to a private organisation for the collection and storage of cord blood.That cord blood is only for personal use by the donor or their immediate family and is not available on the national donor register.
The link below is to a petition that asks the prime minister to make it possible to donate cord blood in every hospital, rather than only 5...
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Cord-Blood/
Thanks for reading, I hope that this gets through in time for when I have another baby - although I think it will be a few years yet!
Ta,
Lou
xXx
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