Giving blood can save the lives of people suffering with coronavirus, or indeed those with blood cancer. Do you have a friend or family with lymphoma, leukaemia, or myeloma? One of the best things you can do for the community is to donate blood. During the lifetime of a patient with blood cancer they may need to receive several different blood products at different times. In fact a significant proportion of all blood donated finds its way to patients with blood cancer.

Simply giving your blood or a component of it might seem like a small step. But it really does save lives. A recent report suggested that through donations of blood stem cells and also a kidney the UK’s most generous man may have saved 30 lives.

Every day we hear the news that hundreds are dying of COVID19. And if you are reading this the chances are you are also concerned about the third most deadly form of cancer: blood cancer. If you already have blood cancer sadly you cannot give any element of your blood. But if you are a friend or family member you definitely can. In this post in our series on hope in the midst of Coronavirus we will focus on just how your blood can save a life.

“The life of the body is in its blood”
The Bible, Leviticus 17:11, New Living Translation

The various components of blood are often given in a targeted way to people who need only that element of the blood. Blood cancer patients are more likely than most other patients to require each of these components of blood. Some seriously ill people with COVID-19 may also need one or more forms of blood components to maximise their chance of survival.

Blood transfusion

Donate blood in the USA , the UK or your own country.

People sometimes assume if they are giving blood it will be given “as is” to the recipient. As with much modern medicine it is often slightly more complex. The blood is typically isolated into its separate parts and you can volunteer to give a specific portion of your blood that is most needed.

In the UK early in the COVID19 epidemic ordinary blood supplies were in a good place and regular blood donors were being turned away. But you can still register as a donor and find a place and time to give your blood in the UK . As the crisis goes on blood supply may come under pressure, as I know it has in the US. However, there are other ways you can donate your blood as we will outline below.

Today we can separate the donated blood at the bedside of the kind volunteer into red blood cells, platelets, and plasma. This process has a fancy name but it is simply sorting the different components out. A slightly more advanced form of this process is used to gather stem cells from donors blood in a process that has now in many cases replaced bone marrow transplants.

Blood Stem Cell Donation or Bone Marrow Transplant

Blood is made in the bone marrow by stem cells. Some types of blood cancer can be cured by a bone marrow transplant or stem cell donation. The patient will be treated to completely suppress their own immune system. The donor cells then replaces the patients blood entirely. One result is that you then have more than one type of DNA in you. A man I know who received his sister’s stem cells joked the same day “Man, I feel like a woman…”

The closer the match between two people’s DNA the more likely the stem cell donation will work. Sometimes a match is found from a member of family, but if we screen tens of thousands of people then a matching stranger can be found. To register as a possible donor all you have to do is give a cheek swab so your DNA can be matched against thousands of potential recipients.

For someone with an aggressive blood cancer they can face an anxious wait whilst a match is looked for. The more people who can sign up the more people will be saved. There are few kinder things to do than signing up to give someone else your immune system and therefore the gift of life.

There is always a need for more stem cell donors. There is still a real shortage of ethnic donors, and matches do tend to be found between people of the the same ethnic background.

Register now as a stem cell donor

After sending in your cheek swab sample you might not hear anything for years. Then one day they might contact you to say that you have a match and have the chacne to save a life. Typically stem cells can be extracted from a blood donation after the donor has taken an injection to stimulate them to grow and migrate out of the bone marrow into the blood. This normally replaces a bone marrow transplant. The process is explained below.

How Stem Cells are Donated

Cord Blood Stem Cell Donation

It does look as there there will be a move towards cord blood stem cell collection and storage. These stem cells are in their most healthy state and could be frozen for future use by baby themselves, their family or even an unrelated donor. National services are beginning to emerge. But at the moment it is still mostly a private exercise. We do not know for sure how long these cells can remain frozen for and still be used in a transplant. This video explains the process:

Perhaps soon every baby will have its stem cells stored for decades in case they need it, and as we get better we might be able to grow stem cells from matching donations so that one donation can be used over and over again.

Antibody or Convalescent Plasma donation

There is one final way that your blood might save a life. It is very much concerned with fighting off infections such as COVID19. One of the oldest ways to help people battling a serious new infection has is something called “passive vaccination”.

For more than 100 years it has been observed that if you take blood from people who have recovered from an infection there is something specific in the blood that will help others fight off the same infection. We now know this substance is called antibodies. The antibodies live in the plasma or liquid part of the blood, and convalescent is an old fashioned word for someone how has recently recovered from an illness. So this is called “Convalsecent Plasma”

A recent study showed that 17% of Londoner and 5% of the rest of the UK have antibodies to COVID19. Similar figures have been found in other countries. The idea is simple. You catch the disease and get better. You have produced antibodies that match this new disease. Your antibodies might help someone else get better too. If you have definitely had COVID-19 you can sign up now!

YOU might be able to save a life. Donate Covid19 antibodies in the UK, in the USA or your own country.

In the UK there is a national campaign to obtain as much convalescent plasma as possible. In the next post in this series we will look at the research being done to see if convalescent plasma works as well as we think it will.

Had Covid19? Donate your Antibodies

In 1994 I wrote a brief theology of transplantation and by extension blood donation for the Christian Medical Fellowship. I determined at the time that I would sign up to the stem cell donor register and also give blood. I was so disorganised, however, that I never quite got round to it to my shame. My lesson from that would be “seize the day”. Make today the day you take three steps that could save a life.

“As Christ’s body is formed by spiritual transplantation, is it not possible that we can view physical transplantation in the light of this? As biblical writers can conceive of Christ giving life to us as we are transplanted into his body, can we not also see that physical transplants can legitimately grant life to their hosts . . . Jesus gave his life for us . . . Surely we can in a small way imitate Christ’s actions “
https://www.cmf.org.uk/resources/publications/content/?context=article&id=491

In the next post in this series on hope in the midst of the Corona-Crunch we will look in more detail at convalescent plasma and ask “will it work?”