A record-breaking 4855 people stood in a line on a rainy day for many hours to check whether they are a stem cell match for a young boy who’s battling cancer.
Oscar Saxelby-Lee is a 5-year-old boy who has acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Doctors informed his parents that he just got 3 months to find a donor to help cure his cancer.
Olivia Saxelby and Jamie Lee who are Oscar’s parents launched a campaign to find a match after the diagnosis. Their goal was to get as many people as possible to sign up to a blood stem cell donor register as part of a campaign called “Hand in Hand for Oscar”.
Nearly 5000 people stood in line in heavy showers outside of Oscar’s school which organized the campaign for prospective donors to give a swab sample and donate blood to be considered.
The charity organization that hosted the drive, DKMS, told that its previous record for a single event was 2,200 people which is just half of Oscar’s campaign.
After seeing the crowd, Oscar’s school “Priston primary school” wrote on twitter saying
“There are no words to express our heartfelt thanks and love for the thousands of amazing people who have turned up at Pitmaston Primary School this weekend. We have registered 4,855 stem cell donors. The volunteers were incredible.”
According to Oscar’s mother, ”Oscar is a fun, loving, energetic five-year-old boy who deserves to live to the full alongside the other troopers fighting such horrific diseases. Not only does he need to enjoy a normal life a child should live, he now needs someone else to save him.“
Currently, Oscar is currently in the care of doctors at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. He has already undergone 20 blood transfusions and four weeks of chemotherapy.
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