LONDON BRONCOS want Rugby League fans to become potential life savers at their home Championship clash with Bradford Bulls on Saturday, September 6.
The Wimbledon club have partnered with blood cancer charity DKMS to organise ‘Emilia’s Big Day’, a family fun and stem-cell donor registration event at the Cherry Red Records Stadium.
It’s in recognition of Emilia Mackay, now seven, who was diagnosed with aplastic anaemia when she was five.
The rare and life-threatening blood disorder required weekly blood and platelet (cell fragments which form clots and stop or prevent bleeding) transfusions to keep her alive.
When doctors told her parents she needed a stem-cell transplant and that no one in the family was a match, a global search to find a donor who could possibly save her life was launched.
Via the DKMS donor register, a match was found in Germany, with the stem cells (donating them is a straightforward outpatient procedure) sent to the UK hospital where Emilia was being cared for.
Since her transplant at the end of 2023, she has been in remission and thriving – and will be the guest of honour when Bradford visit London next month.
“Emilia’s donor changed everything for us. It’s obviously very emotional. The kindness of a random stranger means my daughter has been given another chance at life,” said Emilia’s father James Mackay.
The partnership between the Broncos and the charity was initiated by lifelong Bulls fan Andrew Foster, whose son Rycroft was diagnosed with the rare genetic disorder Shwachman-Diamond syndrome shortly after birth in 2022.
Needing a stem-cell transplant, no family match was found, but a donor was located through the register.
Although the transplant initially improved his condition, Rycroft died at 16 months after contracting an infection during immune recovery.
“Rycroft was so unlucky not to make the full recovery which a stem-cell transplant has offered to so many others, but his transplant gave us more time with him, and every single day was so precious,” explained his father.
“It’s not until your child needs a transplant that you realise how little most people know about stem-cell donation – it’s such an amazing thing to do, and to honour Rycroft’s memory, I wanted to reach more people with that message.”
Events at Emilia’s Big Day, including interactive games and activities for all ages, live entertainment and food trucks, begin at 2.00pm (the match is at 4.00pm), with anyone aged 17 to 55 in good general health able to join the stem-cell register by completing a quick mouth swab.
A free mouth swab can also be requested via the DKMS website.