URGENT APPEAL! Can you help Gennaro?

Our young WA President, Gennaro Rapinese – who has successfully fought off Leukaemia once before in 2015 – has relapsed and is now in for the fight of his life yet again.

If you are interested in donating blood, Gennaro’s wife Joanne has set up a RED25 collective group named “Gs Army”(no apostrophe) … so we can all work together and tally our group donations.

Please first:

1. Ensure you review ALL eligibility criteria. Complete the eligibility quiz here: https://www.donateblood.com.au/eligibility#can-i-give-blood

2. Review travel exclusions based on each country here: https://www.donateblood.com.au/eligibility/donating-after-travelling

3. Contact the Australian Red Cross at www.donateblood.com.au or by phone at 13 14 95 to complete your enrolment (for new donors) and schedule an appointment. If booking online you’ll need to set up an online login first. Please be sure to click Join RED25 then search for “Gs Army”. The clinics’ opening times are available in the comments for your reference.

Joanne also encourages you to consider enrolling on the International Bone Marrow Donor Registry. Enrolling is really easy – if you nominate to do so BEFORE your blood donation, an additional 20-30ml is taken for the registry. More info here: https://www.abmdr.org.au/how-to-join-2/

Even if you do not meet the criteria for blood donation you still may be eligible to go on the IBMDR. Please review the eligibility criteria here: https://www.abmdr.org.au/eligibility-criteria/

Once your sample is collected it takes approximately 3-4 weeks to have your details available for searching on the registry. Most importantly, this is an International registry so you must be willing to donate to anyone who is a match.

The collection process for bone marrow retrieval is a lot simpler these days. Here’s a quick
reference regarding the collection process https://www.abmdr.org.au/collection/