Rachel Bryden is on a mission to encourage more young people to register as stem cell donors, with only 175,000 donors currently registered nationwide.
Click play to hear about Rachel’s mission.
Ms Bryden, a northern suburbs resident, launched the Youth Donor Movement after her 20-year-old son, Liam, was diagnosed with AML Leukaemia in April.
“He had a very, very, very low red-white blood count and practically no platelets so he didn’t have clotting agent and he was then taken straight to A&E at Joondalup where the haematology team tested him and said ‘yes, you have AML Leukaemia’,” she told Youth Jam’s Isaac Mulcrone.
To survive the aggressive strain of blood cancer, the then-19-year-old required a stem cell transplant, but a matching donor could not be found in Australia. Ms Bryden noted that her son was “lucky” when a donor from Europe was identified as a 10/10 match.
Just 35 days post-transplant, Liam is starting to feel better, though the family will not know the full effectiveness of the procedure for some time.
“He’s got about 20 odd tablets a day, he has to take anti-virals and all sort of things because he has no immune system,” she told Newsflash listeners.
Data from Stem Cell Donors Australia shows that only 18 per cent of stem cell donations come from Australian donors, with the remaining 82 per cent sourced from overseas.
A major challenge is an ageing registry. Because only people aged 18 to 35 are eligible to register, the effective donor pool drops to just under 94,000 people.
Ms Bryden emphasised that young people have the power to save lives simply by signing up.
“Encourage your friends. Tell people you’re going to be a lifesaver. Boast about it. It’s something youngsters should do,” she said.
There is also an urgent need for blood donations. Ms Bryden shared that Liam required 50 bags of blood during his hospital stay.
“Everyday people with cancer are needing blood.”
