SISTERS from Greenford hope their survival story will inspire more African Caribbean people to join the bone marrow donor register.

Adele Gordon, aged 26, was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma in November 2013 and required a life-saving bone marrow transplant.

Low numbers of African Caribbean donors on the Anthony Nolan register gives patients from that background just a 20% chance of finding an unrelated donor.

She was incredibly lucky that her sister Maryse, 30, was a match.

Cancer survivor Adele, of Clare Road, said: “It’s a real injustice because cancer doesn’t discriminate, no matter what age or colour you are.

“Because we are a minority, we need to unite and make sure this doesn’t happen and fight it together. Together, we are so much stronger.”

The sisters are joining blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan and the African Caribbean Leukaemia Trust (ACLT) in a campaign to boost the number of black people on the register.

Adele and Maryse want to use their experiences to encourage people aged 16-30 to sign up. After a year of mis-diagnosis, Adele was stunned to hear she had cancer. She was just 25.

“It was a massive shock to me”, she said. “I was a young person, I don’t smoke and I was just thinking – why me? I had no lumps or anything – it was just a cough.”

Following several courses of chemotherapy, Adele was told she needed a life-saving bone marrow transplant.

She said: “It was a very scary time, especially when you hear about the lack of African-Caribbean donors and the odds of finding that perfect match.”

Maryse donated her stem cells, via a simple method called Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Collection, similar to giving blood.

“It’s not as painful as people think” Maryse said. “I actually ended up falling asleep, which passed the time well! I was fully recovered about two days later.”

There are 550,000 people on the Anthony Nolan register, but only 2.8% of these people are African American.

For more information on the Being African Caribbean campaign and to join the Anthony Nolan register, go to www.anthonynolan.org/african-caribbean