Our Motto “Anyone can be a hero”
Since being established in 2015, KKLT has sought to engage with BAME (black & minority ethnic communities to raise awareness of Leukaemia, educate and inform the community about Stem Cell Donation (commonly known as bone marrow donation), and encourage individuals to join the stem cell registry. Our aim is to increase the number of potential stem cell donors in the registry thus increasing BME community’s survival rates.
We have done this through delivering presentations, distributing information leaflets, use of social media, organising events, seeking speaking opportunities in various BAME community gatherings, and partnering with places of worship to talk and holding registration drives.
More recently we have started to expand our services to include the distribution of food parcels and provide emotional and physical support to people with blood cancers and their families, thus reducing their isolation/loneliness and increasing their emotional and mental well-being.
Our story
When Kevin Kararwa, was diagnosed with Leukaemia in 2012, he had a lower chance of survival than most purely because of his ethnic background. He needed a bone marrow donor, but the chances of finding a match were about one in 100 thousand. A 50 per cent matched donation from his brother failed, sadly he lost the battle in 2014 before he could find a suitable donor.
His dying wish was to register over 2,400 new volunteer donors onto the UK bone marrow registry (100 for each year of his life)
Our Values
Dedication, Commitment, Integrity and Empathy
- KKLT prides ourself on our dedication to others and the people we encounter regardless of their situations.
- We are commitment to our beneficiaries, donors, leukaemia suffers and their families and friends
- KKLT believes in the strength of our integrity and aims to showcase this in everything we do.
- Through our lived experience we want our beneficiaries to feel the empathy we have for their present and future position.
Why our work is needed
The statistics show that leukaemia is more commonly diagnosed in white and black males than in Asian males. Although leukaemia only accounts for 3% of all cancer related deaths, there are still around 4,700 leukaemia deaths in the UK every year, which is 13 deaths a day. However, the survival rate for individuals diagnosed with leukaemia is improving with 1-2 surviving five years or more and 4 in 10 for ten years or more. In fact, the survival rate has more than quadrupled in the last 40 years in the UK.
Only 61% of BME patients in need of a stem cell transplant find a suitably matched donor, compared to 96% of White Northern European patients. BME donors make up 15% of the stem cell register while black donors make up 2% of potential donors on the British Bone Marrow Registry.
Through our own research, we have found the most common issue is a lack of knowledge about the leukaemia and stem donation/bone marrow donations, particularly within the African communities in United Kingdom. We also recognise that other barriers have a significant role to play in this lack of knowledge and awareness. The key barriers that we have found are the issues around religious beliefs, cultural and traditional stances.
We have also identified a disparity in the survival rates between Caucasian and groups from other ethnic backgrounds. The figures show that white individuals have a 70% chance of survival compared to only 20% chance for BME backgrounds.
