Stem cell drive for PSV football spokesperson adds 5,000 donors to Dutch registry

An appeal last week from Thijs Slegers, more than 5,000 people have now registered as stem cell donors. Slegers is a spokesperson for Eindhoven football club PSV. He is terminally ill and battling blood cancer, and his public appeal for more people to become donors helped push the number of potential stem cell donors in the Netherlands above 400,000, according to Matchis, the Dutch Center for Stem Cell Donors.

Slegers successfully received a stem cell transplant. However, last week he said he would not be able to get any better. Nevertheless, he called on people to help with stem cell donation. "I can't be helped anymore, but others can!" he wrote on Twitter.

Matchis also said it has since been inundated with questions about stem cell donation and messages from people who want to support this organization and their recruitment of donors. "Several sports clubs want to respond to Slegers' call by also recruiting [donors] themselves."

"The call is also widely accepted in the sports world. That also makes the current growth unique. It is mainly men who are registering. We have never seen this so en masse at Matchis," said Bert Elbertse of Matchis.

Another donation drive was scheduled for Friday evening in Tilburg during the football match between Willem II and FC Dordrecht. The match was previously planned to be in memory of Serge Rossmeisl, the director of the Federation of Professional Football Organizations (FBO), who recently died from leukemia.

The appeal by Slegers also prompted PSV to work out an agreement with its sponsors for the Saturday match against FC Groningen. All of the advertising boards in the stadium will feature information about blood and stem cell donation. On Monday evening, there will also be a four-hour live broadcast on sports channel ESPN.

Slegers said on TV last week that he was very happy with the results from his appeal.