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Health Check: 26/04/2010

26/04/2010

BBC World Service - Health Check, 26/04/2010

Why black and Asian Britons are reluctant to volunteer as blood and organ donors?

For years Beverley De-Gale has campaigned for more black and Asian people in the UK to act as blood and organ donors. She examines the fears and myths behind their reluctance to volunteer.

Why are black and Asian people in Britain reluctant to act as blood and organ donors? 

The problem is made even more stark when it is realised that black people, for example, are three times more likely to need a kidney transplant than the general population because they have a higher incidence of diabetes and high blood pressure, leading to kidney failure. 

Beverley De-Gale examines the imbalance between donors and recipients in the black population. 

Beverley De-Gale’s son, Daniel, was in need of a bone marrow transplant and held out hope for six years before finding a donor but sadly died from complications a few years later. The years of anxious waiting on a list exposed a truth: the pool of black donors was virtually dry. 

In the wake of the death of her son, Beverley De-Gale asks just what is behind the conundrum of Britain’s black population’s disinclination to volunteer as blood and organ donors.

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