A MAJOR new campaign to promote organ donation among East Lancashire’s South Asian community will be launched next month.

An award-winning nurse and a community group have joined forces to launch the drive with a specially-targeted video, which will initially focus on the Black and Ethnic Minority (BME) community in Blackburn and Darwen.

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Its organisers and the Lancashire Council of Mosques hope to see the awareness campaign extended to the whole of the east of the county.

Angela Ditchfield, a specialist organ donation nurse at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, received the Mary Seacole Leadership Award 2014 for her work with BME communities.

As part of the award she has produced a video It’s About Time aimed at Blackburn with Darwen, with the help of borough community group One Voice and its Baiter Sehat health campaign.

The official launch will be on June 9 at the Stanley House and Spa in Mellor where the short film featuring student actors from Blackburn will be premiered.

It will be simultaneously released on social media.

The campaign has the full backing of past and present LCM chairmen Salim Mulla, whose wife Sayeeda had to wait six years for a match for a kidney transplant, and Abdul Hamid Qureshi.

Award-winning Sister Ditchfield said: “This is a wonderful opportunity to raise awareness about organ donation.

“Through my work as specialist nurse, I have seen how organ transplantation can have a huge and life-changing impact on people’s lives.

“The campaign is a fantastic channel to spread that message to the local community.”

One Voice communications boss Zaffer Khan said: “We are very proud to help produce a campaign to raise awareness of organ donation in the BME community initially in Blackburn and Darwen .”

Cllr Mulla, who raised more than £40,000 during his Blackburn with Darwen mayoral year for two kidney dialysis machines which were installed in the Royal Blackburn Hospital earlier this month, said: “I know there are different views in the Muslim community, but from personal experience I know organ donation saves lives.”

Burnley resident Mr Qureshi said: “I hope to see this campaign extended right across East Lancashire to encourage organ donation.”