Big-hearted staff bake to beat blood cancer

A mountain of sweet treats were on offer in HMS Collingwood’s Unit Personnel Office (UPO) recently as staff made a huge effort to raise money for the Anthony Nolan Trust.

Tables in their office groaned under the weight of a load of loaf cakes, a multitude of muffins, and a cornucopia of cupcakes, all baked by the staff or by their relatives and friends. Two large, beautifully decorated cakes were even provided as raffle prizes.

Organiser Kate Williams explained that the sale was to raise money for the Anthony Nolan Trust which has helped her great-niece, Ripley, who was diagnosed with leukaemia aged just two, by finding a partial match for stem cell treatment.

She has recently had her transplant and continues on her road to recovery.

Speaking of the problems faced by the charity, Kate said, “People just don’t know enough about it. The charity can use the blood from umbilical cords to treat patients and yet most of these are discarded.  

“The purpose of this cake sale is to raise both funds and awareness of children’s cancer and the work the Anthony Nolan Trust does.”

The Anthony Nolan Trust was established in 1974 to find suitable matches for people to donate healthy cells to help patients with blood cancers and, forty-three years later, it now has 600,000 potential donors on its database.

It also works at the cutting edge of stem cell research to increase the success rate of these transplants.

The staff’s hard work paid off when they raised a grand total of £307 for the charity.