A specialist nurse who won a national award will be teaming up with a community group to raise awareness of organ donation in the BME community.

One Voice will work with Angie Ditchfield, a specialist organ donation nurse at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, who was recently awarded the Mary Seacole Leadership Award 2014 for her work with black and Asian groups.

There are currently over 6,800 people on the transplant list who are hoping for the gift of an organ, including over a thousand Asian people.

Over the last 18 months, One Voice has been working in partnership with Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council to highlight the need for attracting more donors from the BME community.

One Voice’s Baiter Sehat Campaign was responsible for a rise in enquiries about organ donation through events specifically targeted at the local BME community.

The current project will be supported by organisers and sponsors led by Health Education England. The project will be launched in June 2015.

Zaffer Khan, of One Voice, explains the importance of the organ donation awareness events.

“We are delighted to be assisting Angela and her team in promoting the awareness of organ donation among our communities. We are looking at a number of ways to get the message to our community that the issue of transplants needs to be discussed in a sensitive manner. I would like to think that our work with the North West Blood and Transplant team has made a difference to those waiting on the register.”

Angela Ditchfield said, “I am delighted to have won the Mary Seacole award and feel privileged to have been given this wonderful opportunity.

"I believe it is extremely important to begin to raise awareness about organ donation within BAME communities to ensure that everyone understands the impact that organ donation can have on a community. We need to start having these discussions sooner rather than later so that everyone is given the chance of a transplant."