Hundreds sign up to donate stem cells to save girl

Amilah, 10, and her mother organised an event for people to become stem cell donors

A campaign to find a 'hero' donor match for a 10-year-old girl saw 259 people in Crawley join the stem cell register.

Amilah, from Horsham in West Sussex, suffers from a rare blood disorder and is one of thousands of people in desperate need of a stem cell transplant.

As Amilah - whose name means hope in Arabic - has Pakistani heritage, she is more likely to have a unique tissue type, which makes finding a donor even harder.

Only around 16% of stem cell donors are from black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds, according to blood cancer charity DKMS.

"At the moment there are too many people, particularly from minority ethnicities, who are waiting too long for a transplant match," said Deborah Hyde, from DKMS.

"We want to offer hope to as many people as possible."

Most stem cell matches are found within the same ethnic group

To register as a donor, people gave swabs of their saliva.

The swabs will be sent to a laboratory, where medical staff will analyse different genetic factors which indicate whether someone is a suitable stem cell match.

Amilah says a stem cell donation would be a second chance at life.

She has aplastic anaemia, which causes low blood levels, risk of severe infection, and extreme tiredness.

If she finds a donor, Amilah said: "They could become a hero."

She said she would love to be able to play the sports she had to give up after her diagnosis.

"It would make my life better because nobody would have to worry about me."

Amilah's mother, Mobeen, said "the whole world just crumbled" when they were given the diagnosis.

No one in Amilah's family is a stem cell match, so they hope one of the hundreds of people who signed up will be suitable.

"We caught it very early, so we're very lucky in that sense," her mother said.

Mobeen believes that, at this stage, a stem cell transfusion could provide a complete cure for Amilah.