Bone marrow charity donates $1.8 million
Published: June 7, 2005
Blood services in Wales, England and Northern Ireland are to share a £1m (over $1.8 million USD) donation from a Welsh leukaemia charity whose success has led to it winding up.
Malcolm Thomas, from Bridgend, and John Humphries, from Newport, set up the British Bone Marrow Donor Appeal (BBMDA) in 1987 to help their children.
The UK government will now take on its work in recruiting and tracking donors.
Wales’ blood service will receive £360,000 from BBMDA, England’s £570,000 and Northern Ireland’s £70,000.
Mr Thomas and Mr Humphries established the charity as they searched for bone marrow donors for their children, Alexandra and Mark, who both had leukaemia.
Mr Humphries said because of a lack of organisation in the donor system in the 1980s, he had to drive all over south east England to track down people on the register to find a match for his son.
The two fathers also persuaded the UK’s blood services to work with them and raised money to pay for the testing of tissue types and building of registers.
A match was found for Mark, who went on survive his illness, but Alexandra died at the age of 10 before a match could be found.
‘Constantly expanding’
Since its foundation, BBMDA has raised more than £4m towards the costs of testing, which has led to the recruitment of 250,000 potential bone marrow donors in England and Northern Ireland, with another 40,000 in Wales.
In 2001, the UK government announced a decision to give £5m a year towards tissue-typing and the maintenance of a register.
Mr Humphries said: “After 18 years, in some regards I will be sorry to see the charity be declared redundant, but what better way to finish a charity than to be able to say it’s achieved its objectives and now it can cease to exist?
“There are very few charities that go out this way - successful.
“Things have improved (but) we will need thousands upon thousands more donors because it does seem that the combination of tissue types and new tissue types is constantly expanding, so that work will continue” he added.
“This is why we are dividing our funds between the blood services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.”
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