An interview with Warwick Marrow

Warwick Marrow and Be Kaiya’s Donor hosted “Sign Up Clinic: Kaiya’s Appeal” on Thursday 17 May from 10AM-6PM at the Piazza for Kaiya, a five-year old girl with an aggressive form of leukaemia who desperately needs a stem cell transplant.

The event was hosted to help Kaiya find a matching donor. Warwick Marrow encouraged as many people as possible to sign up for the register to increase the chance of finding her a match. A total of 220 people signed up to the stem cell donor register, which is a new record for Warwick Marrow.

When Kaiya’s grandparents visited the clinic at Warwick, they said: “So so honoured you guys are giving your own free time to do this wonderful work. We as desperate grandparents are eternally grateful to you all.”

Warwick Marrow is a nonprofit organisation and student volunteering group on campus which was founded 2012. They are a student-run branch of Anthony Nolan, a national charity which runs the bone marrow and stem cell register. The group hosts events to find people to sign up for the register, so matches could be found for people who have blood cancer, yet for whom chemotherapy is ineffective.

The process of finding someone with matching stem cells has several steps. When someone with blood cancer needs a stem cell transplant, Anthony Nolan will search the stem cell register to find them a close genetic match. If the match is found, they are contacted and asked to donate their stem cells, which is a similar process to donating blood 90% of the time.

The Boar interviewed Beth Vincent, a representative of Warwick Marrow and Anthony Nolan, at the sign-up clinic on Thursday to gather more information on the society and their work.

What are the aims of Warwick Marrow?

The main aim of Anthony Nolan, the marrow group here at Warwick, and marrow groups at other universities across the country is to sign up as many people as we can to the stem cell donor register, and also raise money to fund research and putting people on the register so that they can give life-saving transplants to other people. Many people in the UK are currently looking for stem cell donors, however the reality at the moment is that not all these people can be matched to those on the existing register. Every person we sign up at our events adds one more person to the register, and one more chance of life to someone with blood cancer.

How do drop-in clinics work?

It’s really easy and straight-forward: it only takes 10 minutes to sign up to the register. Throughout the year, Warwick Marrow run lots of clinics, and they could be anywhere: on Gibbet Hill, the Piazza, Oculus building, wherever. You can always find out when these events are happening by liking Warwick Marrow’s Facebook Page.

When we have an event like this, a volunteer will explain to you the process, what we’re about, and information regarding consent and some statistics. From there, you just fill up a form and have a cheek swab. From that cheek swab, we can work out your cells and find out your tissue type, then put you on the register. It’s literally that simple.

What are the biggest obstacles that Warwick Marrow currently faces?

The first thing is the misconception that donating bone marrow is painful. It’s a question we get all the time, and the answer is no, giving your bone marrow is absolutely painless. Medicine has come a really long way in the last 20 years, and you should never believe what House or Casualty tells you. People have this idea that it’s a lumbar puncture, and you get a huge needle in your back. That’s not what happens. Most of the time, you donate through the blood. It’s just a little needle prick. The rest of the time, you’re given general anaesthetic. The worst thing that happens is that you feel a bit achy for the day afterwards. People who I know have donated say it’s like you’ve run a 10k or haven’t stretched before the gym.

The other misconception is that, for people from an LGBT community, men who have sex with men aren’t able to donate blood. Again, that’s not true. Anyone can donate marrow or stem cells – it’s open to everyone.

Those are the two obstacles in terms of myths. Another huge aim for us is that historically, marrow has been a medical school thing, and we really want it to be an every subject thing. We want it to be on main campus, we want you to be interested in marrow regardless of your background. That’s why we want everyone to be interested in it at Warwick University.

How has the University of Warwick contributed?

The main thing the University has been very helpful with is getting the word out and publicising. The SU is very supportive of us as a society, but it’s also the lecturer whose nephew had a stem cell transplant five years ago, and wants you to do a lecture shoutout. It’s the administrator whose cousin had leukaemia, and wants you to put posters around their department or send an email around. There are so many people in the Warwick University community that in one way or another have been touched by blood cancer, or by Anthony Nolan, or by DKMS or the NHS, and people who are involved in trying to cure it and the help and support they give in order to get the word out is amazing.

What is the most rewarding part of working for this society?

The most rewarding part of being in the society is that you know that there’s a chance that you can sign someone up today who’s going to go on and save someone’s life, and that person’s life wouldn’t be saved if it wasn’t for running an event like this. We’ve met people who have had stem cell transplants, or thought they were gonna lose their child, then their child got better as a result of someone who signed up at a university like Warwick. We’ve even met people who are waiting to find a transplant. One of the most touching things is to have somebody say to you, “Thank you for what you were doing, it’s people like you that mean I’m probably gonna survive.” It sounds like a cliche, but the volunteers here really are saving lives, and we couldn’t do it without them. It’s incredibly rewarding, especially meeting families who were affected and seeing how thankful they are.