The NHS keep a regular supply of all blood types to ensure the right blood is available to everyone who needs it. Giving blood can save lives and the NHS needs around 400 new donors a day to meet demand. However, some blood types are in high demand. Blood donation is needed for patients who receive frequent blood transfusions and who have certain blood conditions. Thalassaemia and sickle cell disease are blood conditions that most commonly affect people from the black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. The treatment of these conditions is much more successful using blood that is best matched from blood donors from the same ethnic background. But only 5% of blood donors in 2018 were from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.

40,000 more black donors are needed to meet the growing demand for better-matched blood. Currently, only 1% of people who give blood in England are black African or Caribbean background and there is a growing demand for blood from these groups.

How do I donate?
Most people can give blood if they:

• are fit and healthy
• weigh between 7 stone 12 lbs and 25 stone, or 50kg and 160kg
• are aged between 17 and 66 (or 70 if you have given blood before)
• are over 70 and have given blood in the last two years

There is eligibility criteria and some considerations depending on your health. You can find out more information about giving blood, the process and check your eligibility on the NHSBT website. Once you have checked your eligibility to give blood, you can register and then make an appointment to donate.

How can I join the register?
Most people aged between 17 and 66 years can give blood. Further information is available on the NHSBT website.

 

Bone marrow is a soft tissue found in the centre of certain bones in your body, which creates stem cells. Stem cells are the 'building blocks', which can grow into any of the other normal blood cells such as red cells, which carry oxygen, white cells, which fight infection, or platelets which stop bleeding.

There are a number of diseases that prevent a patient’s bone marrow from working properly, including leukaemia and other diseases of the immune system. Although chemotherapy successfully treats some patients, for many a stem cell transplant from a healthy donor is the only possibility of a cure.

In about 30% of cases, a matched donor can be found from within the patient’s family, however, the other 70% of patients have to rely on a matched volunteer donor, identified through the British Bone Marrow Registry or partners Anthony Nolan or DKMS. There is an urgent need for donors from minority ethnic backgrounds to help more black, Asian and minority ethnic people in need of lifesaving transplants.

How do I donate?
Further information on bone marrow donation is available on NHSBT website and Anthony Nolan website.

How can I join the register?
In general, those blood donors aged 16 and over can join register via NHSBT or partners such as Anthony Nolan. You can stay on the register until you reach the age of 60.

You can join when you next give blood, or at the same time as your first donation. A check to make sure that there is no medical reason preventing you from being both a blood donor and a stem cell donor will be carried out.

Organ donation is giving an organ to someone else who needs a transplant because their lives are severely affected by a failed organ. Donating organs can dramatically improve and save their lives of seriously ill people.

Organ donation usually occurs after death, but an increasing number of people are also donating their organs (for example, one of their two kidneys, or part of their liver) as a 'living donor'.

As an organ donor you can choose to donate some or all of your organs or tissue: kidneys, heart, liver, lungs, pancreas and the small bowel can all be transplanted, whilst as a tissue donor you can donate skin, tendons, bone, heart valves, cartilage and eyes to repair or rebuild the bodies, faces and lives of thousands of severely injured people.

The NHS Organ Donor Register is a confidential, computerised database which holds the details of those who have decided that, after their death, they want to donate their organs and/or tissue to others. You can also donate part of your liver or a kidney while you are alive. More information on living donation is available on the NHSBT website.

Specific projects of living donation with black, Asian and minority ethnic communities are located on the Living Transplant Initiative webpages. Resources from the Living Transplant Initiative are located on the NHSBT webpage.

In the UK organs and tissue from a potential donor will only be used if that is their known wish. Putting your name on the NHS Organ Donor Register makes it easier for the NHS to establish your decision and for those closest to you to support it. If your decision is not clear, your next of kin will be asked what they think you would have wanted, so it is important that you make sure they are aware of your views on organ donation.

On 20 May 2020 the law will change and all adults in England will be considered to be potential organ donors unless they choose to opt out or are in one of the excluded groups. Further information is on the NHSBT website.

We know that in most cases families will agree to donation if they know that was their loved one’s wish.

If the family, or those closest to the person who has died, object to the donation even when their loved one has given their explicit permission (either by telling relatives, friends or clinical staff, by joining the Register, or deemed to have consented from 2020 due to the change in the law, or by carrying a donor card) healthcare professionals will discuss the matter sensitively with the family.

They will be encouraged to accept their loved one’s decision and it will be made clear that they do not have the legal right to veto or overrule that decision. There may, nevertheless, be cases where it would be inappropriate for donation to go ahead if donation would cause distress to the family.

Yes. Health professionals have a duty of care to try and save life first.

If, despite their efforts, the patient dies, death is confirmed by doctors at consultant level who are entirely independent of the transplant team.

Death is confirmed in exactly the same way for people who donate organs as for those who do not. Once death is confirmed, the donation and transplant specialists would be called in.

Organs and tissue are always removed with the greatest of care and respect under sterile conditions by specialist healthcare professionals. Afterwards the surgical incision is carefully closed and covered by a dressing in the normal way.

Only those organs and tissue specified by the donor or their family will be removed and donors are treated with the utmost respect and dignity.

Please see these videos on 'organ donation myths'.

No. The donation operation is performed as soon as possible after death.

Families are given the opportunity to spend time with their loved one after the operation if they wish and this is facilitated by the specialist nurse. Arrangements for viewing the body after donation are the same as after any death.

The transplant laws in the UK absolutely prohibit the sale of human organs or tissue.

Compatibility between organ donation and religious faith is a key issue for many individuals from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds. This website includes a section which looks at attitudes towards organ donation from the perspective of each of the major religions.

This leaflet from NHSBT provides more detail on organ and stem cell donation and the answers to these and many other questions. NHSBT has also recently produced a video about organ donation and Islam.