Paddy's Plea Comes To CB

Castle Brom comes together to support blood stem cell donor drive.

It was amazing to see people from all over Castle Bromwich pull together to support the ‘Paddy’s Plea’ campaign at our blood stem cell donor drive earlier this week.

There was a great turnout of colleagues all wanting to do their bit to help by signing up to the donor register and hopefully with a bit of luck Paddy and others in his situation can be paired up and get the bone marrow transplant that they so desperately need. 

Only 2% of the UK population are currently signed up as blood stem cell donors, finding a match really is a numbers game so the more people that sign up the more chance those in need have of finding someone.

Paddy Igoe a football loving 12-year-old from Coventry fell ill just after Christmas and was diagnosed with severe Aplastic Anaemia. He needs a bone marrow transplant but despite searching the worldwide bone marrow database he has yet to be matched up with a donor. 

Castle Bromwich’s Richard Feeney and his two friends who work in Gaydon Wanda Hegerty and Declan Webb have been close friends with Paddy’s parents since their school days and have spearheaded the Paddy’s Plea swab drive campaign here at Jaguar Land Rover.  

“We just want to do whatever we can to help the family,” said Declan. 

“Finding a donor for Paddy and others is all about increasing the probability of finding someone so the more people that we can get to sign up the better. Jaguar Land Rover are such a large company and play such massive part in our community, it would be fantastic if we could mobilise our workforce to help find him a donor.”   

A massive thank you to everyone who took part and signed up and all those who volunteered to run the event.

Remember If you want to help you can provide a swab through the post too. Go to www.dkms.org.uk to find out how. You can also find out more about Paddy's Plea at paddysplea.co.uk

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