MOBO partners with us to launch B Positive choir

For the second year running NHS Blood and Transplant and the MOBO Awards will be working together to drive new registrations of much needed blood donors. This year, the campaign features the newly formed B positive choir.

Led by choir master Colin Anderson, the B Positive choir brings together people who live with sickle cell including their helpers, friends and families through music.

Members have come together from all over the country to highlight the need for new young donors to ensure future supplies and an urgent appeal for new black donors.

Sickle cell disease is a serious and lifelong condition. It is the most common and fastest growing genetic blood disorder in the UK and affects around 15,000 people. Although long term treatment can help manage many of the problems associated with it, people who suffer from the disease rely on the kindness of blood donors to enable them to live their life and ultimately save their life.

Donors with a similar ethnic background provide the best match, limiting complications. We need more young people to come forward and donate blood and we urgently need more black people to donate to help those with sickle cell. We need 40,000 new black donors to ensure that we can supply the right types of blood to people with sickle cell.

The choir will perform at Africa in the Square on Saturday 14th October, at the MOBO Awards nominations launch on Tuesday 17th October and at the MOBO Awards on Wednesday 29th November.

"We are urging more new people to come forward. Every day, we have to provide hospitals across the country with 6,000 life-saving blood donations and we need young people to get behind this campaign. You can make a difference in less than an hour, it doesn't hurt, you will find out if you have a rare blood type and you will even get a biscuit!" Nadine Eaton, Head of Marketing

B Positive will be performing at a number of locations throughout the UK to further highlight the need for new blood donors. Follow the choir on our social channels.

If you would like to donate blood and save a life, while going about yours, please register here or download the NHSGiveBlood app.