The chances that two young men in Nanning, capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, would survive leukemia dramatically increased after a local hospital found bone marrow donors with matching stem cells at a marrow bank in Taiwan.

The stem cells arrived in Guilin last Thursday night aboard a flight from Taiwan and were then delivered to Nanning early Friday morning. The two patients received marrow transplants that same day.

It was reported that both patients were about 20 years old and had been sent to hospital last August. Both had received seven doses of chemotherapy.

Throughout their stay at the hospital, medical professionals searched for matching donors in the China Bone Marrow Donors bank. Their efforts were for naught.

With few choices left, the families of the two patients sent applications to the Taiwan Bone Marrow Donors Bank asking for help. After a several-month-long search, medical workers in Taiwan found stem cells that exactly matched those of the two patients.

On March 20, the doctor in Nanning who was in charge of treating the two young men flew to Taiwan to retrieve the bone marrow. The surgery went ahead as planned following the doctor's return from Taiwan.

It was the second time in history that medical staff in Taiwan and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region had joined hands to jointly rescue leukemia patients. A hospital in Guilin contacted the Taiwan Bone Marrow Donors Bank for stem cells last year and found a matching donor several months later.

On December 6, surgeons at the hospital transplanted 184-mililiters of marrow that had been donated by a person in Taiwan into a woman leukemia patient in Guilin. A test conducted before the surgery indicated that the survival rate of the stem cells in the marrow was 96 percent even after several hours in transit.

The woman is now in stable situation.

(China Daily March 27, 2007)