l Every 20 minutes someone in the UK is diagnosed with a blood cancer.
l Around 1800 people in the UK need a bone marrow (or stem cell) transplant each year.
l 63% of UK patients will not find a matching donor from within their families.
l About half of those who need a life-saving bone marrow transplant find a suitable donor.
l White Northern Europeans have a 90% chance of finding a suitable donor. This falls to just 40% for people from black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds.
l 90% of donations take place via PBSC (peripheral blood stem cell collection). This is an outpatient appointment and is similar to donating blood.
l More young men aged 16-30 are needed as donors as they are most likely to be chosen but make up just 12% of the register.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
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