It costs thousands of pounds to establish a new cord blood centre, so we need to focus our funding in the most effective way. We know that lots of babies are born at these four hospitals every year, and that these areas have a diverse population. We need to make sure our cord blood bank is as ethnically diverse as possible, so more people have more chances of finding a lifesaving match.

Life-threatening conditions, including:

• leukaemia
• immune-deficiency illnesses, like aplastic anaemia and severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID)
• blood cell production disorders, such as multiple myeloma and lymphoma
• haematological malignancies, like thalassemia major
• congenital metabolic disorders, like Hurler/Hunter syndrome and Duncan’s syndrome.

We have been working towards growing our cord blood bank to 10,000 searchable cord blood units. A bank this size means 80% of people who need transplants should be able to find a match. Now that we have reached this size we are focussing on adding high quality, diverse units to the cord blood bank to replace those that are being shipped for patients.