15 year old blood cancer patient Alice Pyne, who hit the headlines last month with her ‘bucket list’ of things to do before she dies, will meet Prime Minister David Cameron at 10 Downing Street on Wednesday 13th July.
One of Alice’s wishes is for everyone to join the stem cell, or bone marrow, register, which Anthony Nolan manages. Alice says, 'I hate thinking of all the people who have died because there wasn’t a match for them. Unless we can get more people to sign up to the bone marrow registers, many thousands more won’t make it in future. Whatever we achieve from this visit will be too late for me. But it would make me so happy if we can change things for all the Alice Pynes that will come after.'
Henny Braund, Chief Executive of Anthony Nolan, adds, 'Alice’s meeting with David Cameron is both a fantastic tribute to her original campaign, as well as a brilliant opportunity to raise awareness of the need for people to join the register. Although we currently have over 400,000 people on our register, we can still only find a match for half of the people who come to us in need of a potentially lifesaving transplant.'
We have recently launched our GET10K campaign to get 10,000 young men aged between 18 and 30 to join the register. Young men are the most likely to be chosen as a match for someone with blood cancer, but they account for less than 12% of the register.
Anthony Nolan and a cross party group of Cumbria MPs, led by John Woodcock MP, have also asked MPs to help raise awareness of the campaign in their own constituencies over the summer.