A few facts about our Register
The Anthony Nolan bone marrow register has helped give a chance of life to over 4,000 people since 1974. It is the most successful bone marrow register in the UK and the third largest register in the world.
Donors
- There is a one in four chance that a brother or sister will share the same tissue type.
- 30% of patients needing a transplant will find a matching donor from within their own family, generally from a sibling
- We find unrelated donors for patients
Extraction method
The Anthony Nolan Trust changed its name from the Anthony Nolan Bone Marrow Trust in 2001 to reflect changes in extraction method. The traditional method of removing blood stem cells directly from the bone marrow is shifting in favour of removal from the peripheral (circulating) blood.
Transplants
- The success rate for transplants varies between 40 and 70%, depending on many factors. This rate is improving due to advances in transplant practice, more accurate donor matching and other factors. It is generally higher for children.
- Anthony Nolan directly locates donors in three ways
- we provide unrelated UK donors for UK patients
- we provide UK donors for overseas patients
- we provide overseas donors for UK patients
- since 1974, The Anthony Nolan Trust has made possible over 4,000 transplants
The Register
The Anthony Nolan register has grown steadily since 1974.
The overall ratio of male : female potential donors on our register still stands at around 2 : 3.
The male : female ratio for actual donors is almost exactly the reverse of the proportion on our register.
We are now succeeding in recruiting more male than female donors to the register, as male donors are clinically preferred, but we need to reverse the historic female weighting.
Similarly, we need to increase the representation of black and minority ethnic communities on the register.
The breakdown of actual transplant donors in 2004 is overwhelmingly north European / white Caucasian.
2004
Every year is a busy year for The Anthony Nolan Trust and 2004 was no exception. The headline figures are very simple :
- we ran 390 donor recruitment clinics
- we recruited over 23,000 potential donors from clinics and postal packs
- we tissue-typed the highest average weekly number of blood samples since 1986 – 450
- we tissue-typed 23,240 new donor blood samples to the Register.
- we ran nearly 2000 searches on behalf of patients in the UK and abroad
- we traced over 500 individuals who were potential matches whose contact details had changed
- we organised 294 grafts, or harvests, extracting blood stem cells from donors and supplying them to patients
- we sourced donors for 140 patients overseas
- we sourced overseas donors for 162 UK patients
The end result : we gave 456 patients a hope of life.
To put it into perspective
- around 7,000 people worldwide currently require a donor
- every year, over 24,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with leukaemia or a related cancer
Of these patients , some are successfully treated by chemotherapy or homeopathy.
For those patients who don’t respond to chemotherapy, a transplant is their major, almost their only hope of life.
Around 7,000 people currently require a donor.
There’s a long way still to go.
Registers around the world
- There are more than 50 registers and 9.5 million potential donors worldwide. Breakdown of male / female volunteers on the Register:- approx 60% female and 40% male. There is an urgent need for male donors.
- The Anthony Nolan Trust is the world’s third largest register of potential donors, after those in USA and Germany.
Costs
- It costs this charity up to £70 to recruit, tissue-type and maintain the records of every new volunteer who joins our register
- We need to raise £14.5 million in 2005 to achieve our objectives.
Courtesy of The Anthony Nolan Trust |
