Charity holds stem cell recruitment drive at Birmingham netball event

Netball players gave swabs and joined the UK register on Saturday

A leading blood cancer charity is urging more people to sign up to a stem cell register after a dramatic fall in numbers.

DKMS held a recruitment drive in Birmingham on Saturday after registrations fell by 63% in the past year.

Only 3% of the population is on the register, the charity said.

Players at the Netball Summer League gave mouth swabs as one of their teammates needs a stem cell transplant.

Jayne Clayton, from the league, said: "One of the girls in Birmingham is looking for a match and being part of our netball family, we'd love it if one of a our netball families finds a match for her."

Gurmail Sagoo travelled to Canada to meet the person he helped

Louise Clague, recruitment director for DKMS, said stem cell treatment - taking cells from a person's blood or bone marrow - can be the only option for some patients.

"When somebody is going through blood cancer, when radiotherapy or chemotherapy doesn't work or stops working, their best chance of survival, or their only chance of survival, is a stem cell transplant," she said.

"The problem we've got in the UK, is we've only got 3% of the British population on our register, simply because people don't know about it."

Only one in four people with blood cancer and in need of a transplant will find a matching donor within their family, the charity said.

Gurmail Sagoo from Birmingham who attended the event, previously signed up to the register and was told two years later he had helped save someone's life in Canada.

"I got a letter through the post two years later to say that I can meet my stem cell recipient," he said.

"So we flew over to Vancouver and that's where I met her."

The charity said it was also keen to attract black and Asian volunteers to join the UK register.

Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: [e-mail]