People on Yorkshire Coast urged to register as stem cell donors
It's as charity DKMS has seen a drop in numbers due to the pandemic
The son of a family near Whitby is appealing for more people to register as a stem cell donor.
Peter McCleave has Myeloma, which is an incurable blood cancer, and he is yet to find a match.
He is working with charity DKMS to raise awareness as it has seen a drop in registrations during the pandemic.
Peter said:
"It's a simple swab on the inside of your mouth and you could potentially save someone's life by being their genetic twin. The reason why it's so hard for many people to find a match is there aren't enough people on the register at the moment but even more so, if you're an minority ethnic background, you've got a best of 20 percent chance of finding your match, which is where I find myself.
"My background is Macanese, Chinese and Portugese mixed with Irish and English so it's much more difficult because there's so few people of minority ethic backgrounds on the register at the moment but it's easily fixed, all we have to do is tell people, get them swabbed and registered and it's something, which in future, once we get 90 percent of the population on there, we can stop doing this.
"Prior to Covid, we were going out doing presentations, running projects to try and whip up a bit of interest but because of Covid, we've all been locked up which makes it much more difficult. So the charity has found a real drop off in registations but now that we're coming out the back of Covid hopefully it gives us the chance to get out there and just start banging the drum again.
"I've kind of made peace with the fact that the chances of me finding a match are very, very slim because of my genetic heritage but that's fine. There are other technologies which might be able to help should they make it through but at the moment I'm feeling alright. The fact that we are finding matches, we are getting more people registered, that's enough to keep me going."
His parents are June and Mike McCleave from Sleights.
June said: "We are incredibly proud of him. He just doesn't give up and he keeps coming up with these incredible challenges, there's always another idea."
Mike added: "I'm very, very genuinely hopeful and infact confident something will crop up for Peter in all of this. It will."
Peter has a campaign called 10,000 donors and he has helped 17 people find a match.
You can find out more about DKMS and order a swab kit here.
June and Mike have a Facebook page where they post information about events happening on the Yorkshire Coast to get more donors.