Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that adequate numbers of high-quality donors are available for patients requiring a stem cell transplant.

The Department’s Stem Cell Programme is providing £2.4 million of funding to Anthony Nolan and NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) for a three-year targeted stem cell donor recruitment campaign. The approach focuses on recruiting donors most likely to donate, including male donors aged 16 to 30, and ethnic minority donors to address health inequalities. The Anthony Nolan stem cell register has nearly 900,000 potential stem cell donors and Departmental funding contributed to recruitment of over 37,000 people aged 16 to 30 in 2022/23. NHSBT can recruit from registered blood donors whose tissue is typed to a very high level, using Next Generation Sequencing technology. Targeted e-mail campaigns to specific ethnic heritage groups highlight the need for more donors from these groups. NHSBT is also conducting qualitative research within specific ethnic heritage groups to identify how it can improve the recruitment of donors from these groups.