A baby's umbilical cord blood contains lifesaving stem cells that could be used to treat people suffering from a wide variety of diseases including leukaemia, sickle cell anaemia and other life threatening conditions.

We can help patients by giving them stem cells in a process called cord blood transplantation as an alternative to stem cell (or bone marrow) transplants. Cord blood has the advantage of being immediately available to a patient when required and is not as difficult to match to a patient as stem cells from an adult donor. The more we collect the more lives we can save. Lives like Sorrel's (pictured right), who received a cord blood transplant.

In the last year, we imported over 80% of the cord blood units used by UK transplant centres from cord banks overseas. We’ve imported nearly 300 cord blood units for UK patients over the last four years and 90 in the last year alone. But, if we are to save more lives, we must create a larger, more efficient system of collecting cords within the UK, working alongside the NHS, to provide a more reliable and affordable service to UK transplant centres and their patients.

At present, you can only donate cord blood to the Anthony Nolan Cord Blood programme if you are booked for antenatal care at King’s College Hospital or The Royal Free Hospital in London, the Leicester Royal Infirmary and Leicester General Hospital. The NHS also runs a Cord Blood Bank where you can donate from a further six hospitals in Greater London. We’re opening a fifth centre at Birmingham Women’s Hospital in mid-June 2012. Find out if you are eligible to donate to the Anthony Nolan Cord Blood programme.

We are committed to, and have plans in place, to expand the programme to other major urban maternity units in England and Wales. It costs us over £200,000 per year to establish a new centre and as a charity we need more funds to increase our lifesaving work. If you would like to help please make a donation or fundraise for us.

In the UK alone last year, 65,000 litres of cord blood were discarded following births. Considering that 80% of transplant requests would be met if the UK saved just 50,000 cord blood units, it’s of utmost importance that we tackle the waste of this lifesaving resource. It would especially help ethnic minorities and people with rare tissue types, as it’s harder to find an adult match for patients from these backgrounds.

On average, every year 1 in 100 cord units collected will be used for transplantation compared to 1 in 1000 registered adult donors. The UK needs to be level with Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the USA and others where there are government supported national collection programmes. Working with other partners, we aim to expand the UK inventory to 50,000 cords by 2014.