Hero charity worker transporting lifesaving stem cells during coronavirus

A charity worker has been battling the clock, travel restrictions and border closures to ensure lifesaving stem cells can be delivered to blood cancer patients who desperately need them to survive.

Rebecca Pritchard, 32, from Crystal Palace, is head of the register development team at the worldwide Anthony Nolan Trust – responsible for recruiting young people to the cancer-battling charity.

But Ms Pritchard has now volunteered to be a courier collecting donated stem cells, amid coronavirus lockdown, and transport them through lockdown to patients waiting for a lifesaving transplant.

Anthony Nolan matches individuals willing to donate their stem cells, which boost the body’s own immunity, to patients with blood cancer or blood disorders who desperately need lifesaving transplants.

The charity usually needs 50 volunteers, mostly retired, to travel the UK and the world to collect stem cells from donors and deliver them safely to patients for lifesaving transplants within 72 hours. On average, these helpers save Anthony Nolan more than £500,000 a year.

Many of those volunteers are too vulnerable to travel, so staff from across the trust have stepped in and been trained, virtually, to pick up and deliver stem cells within a matter of hours.

Ms Pritchard said: “I have always wanted to courier. It’s a huge responsibility but there’s something incredible about being that link between the donor and the patient and playing a small part in hopefully saving someone’s life.

Anthony Nolan has created an emergency ‘Handover Hub’ at Heathrow Airport, open 24-hours-a-day to enable international couriers who cannot go into hospitals – because of social distancing rules – to transfer donated stem cells to one of its UK volunteers for the final lifesaving leg.

Henny Braund, chief executive of Anthony Nolan, said: “Anthony Nolan was founded on the kindness of strangers. The reason we’ve been able to take swift and immediate action to ensure lives can be are saved because of our wonderful staff team, like Becca who sprang into action when she was asked to deputise for our volunteer couriers.

“Our team is working around the clock to keep stem cell donations moving during this difficult period, to save patients’ lives.”

Stem cells, most commonly harvested from a donor’s bone marrow, can divide indefinitely and overcome a patient’s inability to repel infection.

Anthony Nolan also needs to raise an extra £10,000, every month that the coronavirus pandemic continues, to fund this work. Click here to find out how you can help the charity keep this lifesaving work going.