While 220 residents responded to the call from the Jersey Friends of Anthony Nolan and registered as potential donors to help Tony Ferreira, who is suffering from Sezary syndrome, no match was identified.
Tony’s wife, Osvalda, encouraged potential donors to continue to sign up to the register and extend a lifeline to her husband.
‘Tony and I are very grateful to the Jersey Friends for running the donor recruitment event last summer,’ Mrs Ferreira said. ‘Sadly, we did not succeed in finding a match for Tony. He is still needing a matching donor.’
The charity has also announced its plans to mark its 25th year in Jersey, which include bringing more Islanders onto the register.
The Jersey Friends of Anthony Nolan have been active since 1994, raising over £800,000 in local donations since that time.
The charity has recruited 1,775 to its stem cell registry, which fights leukaemia and other blood cancers since its launch and has been responsible for 18 matches, with local people having received life-changing transplants.
One person the charity has helped is local footballer Ben Hicks.
The St Clement’s FC player and coach battled chronic granulomatous disease in his late teens and received a life-saving donation. Now his club have signed up to a registration drive which they hope to roll out to other clubs around Jersey.
‘We are delighted to be involved in the work of Anthony Nolan, as it supports people with blood cancer and other blood disorders,’ said Jersey Football Commission president Charlie Browne.
‘Our own Ben Hick is living proof of the need for a pool of potential stem cell donors.
‘The importance of this work cannot be underestimated. It literally saves lives and changes the lives of the recipients and their families.
‘Our JFC membership are the ideal target age and profile and we hope the support we can give the Jersey Friends through football player registrations will make a real difference, as well as encourage other sports to become involved.’
The charity normally seeks healthy donors between the ages of 16 and 30 and has a particular need for men to register. Male donors in this age range are most likely to be chosen to donate but represent only 16% of the register.
As well as ongoing fundraising and the JFC partnership, the charity is looking for 25 ‘Anthony Nolan Ambassadors’ for the Jersey Friends this year. They will be trained to speak to community groups about the work of the charity.
Jersey Friends committee chair Tim Hicklin said their work was ‘a never- ending process, with more and more diagnoses and therefore a bigger pool of potential donors needed’.
‘As a stem cell recipient myself, I am proud to chair a team of such hard-working and dedicated volunteers, whose tireless efforts have proven themselves, with both awareness and monies raised,’ Mr Hicklin said.
‘We have set ourselves some ambitious 25th anniversary targets but we believe we can achieve these with the support of the JFC and the general public in Jersey. It is easy to join the Anthony Nolan register and save the lives of people like Ben, myself and Tony. The process is straightforward – a simple medical questionnaire and two cheek ‘swabs’ – done in the time it takes to boil a kettle.’
- Anyone interested in stem cell donation or the work of the Jersey Friends can contact them through Facebook or via email at: jerseyfriendsofan@gmail.com. People can also sign up online to join the register at (www.anthonynolan.org/joinjersey).
