New Petitions

PE1204, from Jessie Colson, on behalf of the Richard Colson Severe Aplastic Anemia Fund, calls on the Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to recognise and promote the life-saving impacts that bone marrow testing and donation can have on people with life-threatening illnesses, and to provide adequate funding to the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service to support bone marrow services and encourage more donors.I welcome to the meeting Michael McMahon, who is the relevant constituency member. He was present when the petition was presented to the Parliament some weeks ago. I invite him to speak to the petition on behalf of the petitioners.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. I shall ask a few questions that the petitioners have put to me. Getting answers to those questions is essential to the campaign that the petitioners are conducting on behalf of their son, Richard. Jessie and Robert Colson have done a huge amount of work to promote bone marrow donations. Throughout their campaign, they have encountered a few areas in which questions have arisen to which they are seeking answers.ScotBlood and the Anthony Nolan Trust recently released a statement in which they said that they were joining forces to encourage more Scottish blood donors to join the Anthony Nolan Trust register. An August 2008 press release from ScotBlood stated that it was committed to collecting bone marrow donors in Scotland. It launched an initiative a few weeks ago, but the family points out that people are only asked and encouraged to join the Anthony Nolan Trust register in that initiative—there is no commitment on collection. The family believes that a clear distinction is involved.The criteria for joining the Anthony Nolan Trust register are similar to those that are used by the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, of which ScotBlood is part. The only difference is in the age of donors. The age range for the Anthony Nolan Trust is 18 to 40; the SNBTS age range is 18 to 50. My constituents wonder what is wrong with 40 to 50-year-old Scottish blood donors. They also wonder why the Anthony Nolan Trust keeps potential donors on its list until they are 60 if the ideal age for donors is between 18 and 40. Is the Anthony Nolan Trust prepared to use donors from 40 to 60, or are names retained to make the register look better than it is?Bone marrow is a live tissue that can be donated only by living donors. ScotBlood should be the primary collection agency in Scotland, and the age limit of potential donors should be increased, in the view of the Colsons. It costs the Anthony Nolan Trust £125 per person to collect and store donor samples and details. In the view of my constituents, the value of life therefore comes down to £125.Scottish people are dying because the current rules mean that people over the age of 40 who live in Scotland cannot donate bone marrow that could be a potential recipient's only lifeline.Agencies use figures to inform us of how many people desperately need bone marrow donations. The Scottish Government should commit to advertising in the media to inform the public of the importance of bone marrow donations, and it should seek to remove any obstacles to donating to increase the number of potential donors.In Scotland, people who are awaiting bone marrow transplants rely on a charity—which has, in the main, to rely on the public and the business community for funding—rather than on a Government-funded agency that already has staff and amenities at its disposal to collect bone marrow samples from Scottish blood donors.My constituents rightly regard Scottish health services as the finest in Britain, and they want the area of bone marrow donation to move forward in line with those services. They do not want their son to have to rely on a charity—no matter how large and famous—to control such a major part of the health service. They want people to remember that underneath the figures and the issues that are under discussion, real people, such as Richard Colson, and real families are affected.

You have been dealing with the issue with your constituents. Have they made positive suggestions to the SNBTS or other agencies with regard to mapping the potential cost? Can a pilot programme be carried out? Do you have any thoughts or observations on that?

Some positive suggestions have been made. The family work closely with the Anthony Nolan Trust and campaign a great deal on its behalf—they are certainly not critical of the trust. The family also approach ScotBlood regularly to discuss how best to address what they consider to be the gaps in the service and the frustration that they feel at knowing that there are potential donors out there who are not being reached. We need to ask how we can reach potential donors and how we can ensure that people are given the best possible opportunity to become donors or prospective donors.I am sure that members will be aware of ScotBlood's recent initiative, which involves asking people who give blood whether they wish to put their name forward as a possible bone marrow donor. As the family point out, however, that leaves another step in the process: how we collect information about bone marrow donors to go on the Anthony Nolan Trust list. There needs to be some connectivity, which is where the family hope that the Government will step in, rather than leaving the issue to a charity.The family are in no way critical of ScotBlood or the Anthony Nolan Trust. They realise that there is some way to go, and they would like some Government assistance in taking the issue forward.

Are there any comments from members?

Michael McMahon raised an important point about the need for joined-up working and connectivity and how that could best be effected. We could write to the SNBTS and the Anthony Nolan Trust to ask how that could best be progressed.We should also raise the issue of widening the narrow age groupings of donors—the Anthony Nolan Trust limits donors to those who are over 18 and under 40. We could pose those questions to the Scottish Government, as John Farquhar Munro said, and to the SNBTS, the British bone marrow registry and the Anthony Nolan Trust.

Does Michael McMahon wish to make any further comments on behalf of the petitioners about what he would like to happen?

From my experience on the committee, I know that it will give its best endeavours. I look forward to seeing the responses that the committee receives.

We will take on board what members have said. We need to explore further the age anomaly. More important, in order to deal with the specific issues raised by the petitioners, we need to consider whether structures will be put in place, what resources can be made available and what kind of mapping exercise is being carried out.