Sickle Cell Disorders and the Call for Black Blood Donors

Join us for an interactive workshop about the history of blood donation campaigning and its importance in sickle cell disorders treatment.

About this Event
Sickle cell disorder predominantly affects people of Black African and Caribbean heritage and is now the UK’s fastest-growing genetic condition. Come and join us for an interactive workshop about the history of blood donation campaigning and its importance in sickle cell disorders treatment.

We will be joined by a range of speakers from the sickle cell community including Professor Dame Elizabeth Nneka Anionwu, UK’s first sickle cell nurse specialist.

Saturday 20th June 2-3:30 pm via Zoom

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Our Journey, Our Story is the Sickle Cell Society’s new project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Through oral histories, it will explore the history and memory of sickle cell disorders (SCD) in the UK since the Windrush’s arrival. SCD predominantly affects people of Black African and Caribbean heritage and is now the UK’s fastest-growing genetic condition – changes over the last 70 years have been immense. Although SCD has been medically recognised as a health condition for over a century, awareness of it remains relatively low and people with SCD are still facing stigma.

South London Gives aims to increase regular blood donation in people of black heritage.The blood donation service needs to recruit 40,000 new black and mixed race donors to treat sickle cell patients. Sickle cell patients needing regular blood transfusions benefit from more precisely matched blood and this is most likely to come from someone with the same ethnicity. South London Gives’ team of volunteers raise awareness of the need for more black donors, breakdown some of the myths, preconceptions and fears that exist around the topic and encourage people to sign up to give blood in their communities.

Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and NHS Blood and Transplant