Perfect donor match found for Kailee

The odds were rated at several million to one, but Linda Wells - the adoptive mother of six-year-old Kailee who is dying of leukaemia - may have just achieved the near-impossible dream.

She returned to the mainland last week in a final attempt to save her daughter's life by finding a compatible bone marrow donor - and now doctors have told her they have found a perfect match.

'I just can't believe it; it's too good to be true,' the 51-year-old American said yesterday. 'I'm simply ecstatic.'

The Tianjin doctors finally found the match in the umbilical cord of a baby born one year ago. The cord had been frozen in a hospital.

But although three blood experts have already said it was a perfect match, she said final confirmation would not come until today, when she goes to Tianjin, where the donor was found.

'I'm so excited but also very afraid that it might turn out not to be a match,' she said. 'But at this stage all the indications are that it really is a perfect match.'

Kailee, who suffers from severe aplastic anaemia, has been kept alive by chemotherapy, steroids and a radical cocktail of drugs. Several months ago her doctors said she would only live a matter of weeks if a suitable donor was not found.

She was abandoned on the doorstep of a teacher-training college in Hunan in 1997, when she was just 10 days old. Mrs Wells and her husband, Owen, from Albuquerque, New Mexico, adopted her the following year.

Mrs Wells travelled to China in February in an attempt to locate Kailee's natural parents, who would be the most likely to provide a suitable match. But despite an overwhelming public response to her appeal, which saw registered bone marrow donors on the mainland surge from 20,000 to 83,000, the mission ended in failure.

On her original trip, Mrs Wells had a single objective - to find a marrow donor for Kailee. But, as hope rapidly faded for her own daughter, her return visit was inspired by her desire to draw widespread attention to the plight of all those in need of bone marrow transplants, including the 4 million leukaemia sufferers around the world.

During Mrs Wells' mainland mission, which has been supported by the South China Morning Post, she said she had received 'absolutely unbelievable' help from Chinese authorities and the Red Cross, who had searched tirelessly for a donor to save her child.

Once doctors can confirm there is enough usable blood in the umbilical cord to perform the transplant, Mrs Wells will make arrangements to have it sent to the US. The transplant, which involves extensive chemotherapy and radiation treatment, could take up to five months to complete, and will be conducted in a Wisconsin hospital, she said.

After 22 months of desperation, hope has appeared on Mrs Wells' horizon. 'It's all just so difficult to believe,' she said.