Australian Red Cross Lifeblood is urging never-infected individuals to come forward and replenish their banks of faecal transplant gold.
Calling all westerners with working bowels who haven’t had covid: it’s time to donate your waste material for science.
The Australian Red Cross Lifeblood is in desperate need of a top-up for its microbiome program in Perth, as covid has wiped out 85% of its existing donors.
Sadly, the service is unable to accept donations if someone has had covid, which means the organisation needs to find another 2400 Western Australians who can donate regularly, to help them treat people with everything from ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease to major depressive disorders.
The TGA-licensed facility accepts donations from adults under the age of 50, which are then processed for faecal microbiota for transplant (FMT) treatments.
“Just one in 100 people who enquire will be eligible to donate, so we need as many people as possible to sign up,” said the program’s associate manager, Silvana Miney.
“FMT is made by collecting stool from a healthy donor, testing and processing it, then supplying it to hospitals to transplant to patients,” she said in a statement.
“It might seem like an unusual request, but there are more than a trillion life-saving microorganisms in your gut.
“Your healthy microbiota, something that normally gets flushed away, could be used to make FMT that can transform and even saves lives.”
If you have a crap idea you’d like to share, email penny@medicalrepublic.com.au.
