A 7-year-old leukemia patient underwent a stem cell transplant operation yesterday at Shanghai No. 1 People's Hospital, which conducted the city's first double-sample umbilical cord blood transfusion.

It should take three months to identify the treating result, while medical experts expressed strong confidence Zuo Fan will recover.

"She is in the terminal stage of leukemia, so a stem cell transplant is her last opportunity. We found two matching samples from the Shanghai Umbilical Cord Blood Bank and introduced both samples to Zuo," said Dr Wang Chun, who led the procedure. "It is a common practice in the West to plant two samples into a leukemia patient. While, it is the first time we tried the same method."

Similar with adult bone marrow, umbilical cord blood contains the same healing component called stem cells.

Zuo was diagnosed with the leukemia in 2001. She has been waiting for a matching donor ever since.

Her parents hailed the transplant, though they still need to collect about 130,000 yuan (US$16,049) to pay for the medical expenses of 300,000 yuan.

About 40,000 patients are diagnosed with leukemia in the nation every year and more than 50 percent of them are children.

(Shanghai Daily October 20, 2005)