A dying leukaemia patient's desperate search for matching bone marrow has highlighted the urgent need of the country's marrow banks for money to cover the costs of testing blood samples.

Wei Nan, a soldier in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, was diagnosed with acute leukaemia on July 11 and needs an urgent marrow transplant.

His mother, Wang Yan, has appealed to big bone marrow banks in the Chinese mainland, Taiwan Province and even Japan, for help. But none of the marrow samples supplied by the banks matched her son's, China Daily reported Tuesday.

Many volunteers called to offer help after a local newspaper in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, called for local residents to donate stem cells for him.

However, the real problem is the lack of money to test blood samples.

"We can take more blood samples from donors, but we don't have enough money to test them," China Daily quoted Luan Shuqin, director of the bone marrow bank, as saying.

She said each blood sample should go through a Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA) test before its information can be stored in Zhonghua Marrow Bank.

"But the HLA tests cost 530 yuan (some US$65) each," she said, adding that only 7,000 out of 11,000 blood samples collected had been tested due to lack of funds.

"The lack of funds may result in the loss of information about donors," she said.

The plight the bank is facing also affects 30 other branches across the country.

Each year, the government puts a certain quota on donors and gives a corresponding amount of money for the branches to register donors.

The quota for Heilongjiang Bone Marrow Bank is 3,000 donors this year, and Luan said that they have already fulfilled that quota.

Nevertheless, the province's high incidence of leukaemia calls for a much larger bone marrow bank.

"At present, Heilongjiang Province already has the highest incidence of leukaemia, with about 1,000 children suffering from this fearful disease," said Ma Jun, director of Heilongjiang Blood Research Center.

The incidence of leukaemia is seven in every 100,000 people in Heilongjiang, while the national average is about five in every 100,000.

According to Ma, the Heilongjiang Province, with a population of 38 million, needs a marrow bank that contains the information of at least 100,000 potential donors.

The matching success rate of bone marrow is just one in 10,000for relatives and one in 100,000 among non-relatives.

"We do need more volunteers, but we also need the funds to do sample analysis and expand the capacity of the marrow station," Luan said.

(China Daily August 9, 2005)