FORMER England and Everton soccer player Gary Stevens has backed a west Belfast father's appeal for people to join a stem cell donor registry.
Seán Smyth's daughter Eimear, who suffered from Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, was 25 when she died in June 2019 due to complications from a donor stem cell transplant.
He said Mr Stevens and his wife Louise were keen to back his campaign after the couple's four-year-old son Jack died last year following a battle with leukaemia.
Mr Smyth has spent the last few years campaigning for more people to join the donor registry.
Translink has now got on board with the 'Eimear's Wish' campaign.
Information posters will be placed on the company's Metro bus services from today.
Mr Smyth said it is hugely important that as many people as possible, particularly young men aged between 16 and 30, join the stem cell registry.
"We're not asking for money. We're asking people to donate," he said.
"This caused devastation to my family and Gary and Louise's family. Cancer doesn't discriminate."
Mr Smyth said people from ethnic minority communities are hugely under-represented on the register.
He said by signing up, potential donors are "giving someone a little bit of hope".
"We're just under 1.9 million in Northern Ireland but only 2.7 per cent of the population are registered as stem cell donors," he said.
"We have the lowest registered stem cell donors in the UK."
Anyone between the ages of 16-55 and in general good health can become a potential blood stem cell donor.
To register, visit Anthony Nolan (anthonynolan.org) or DKMS (dkms.org.uk).
More information on Eimear’s Wish campaign can be found at https://eimearswish.org.
