Pictured here is Molly-Ann Barnett aged 5, from Hessle, near Hull in East Yorkshire, UK. The photograph was taken in August 1999, a few weeks before she was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia and transferred to St James (Jimmy's) Hospital in Leeds.  In 2003 Molly-Ann is now 9 and doing fantastically well.

Molly-Ann was diagnosed with the disease in September 1999, she had been complaining of a headache for four days but otherwise was perfectly healthy.  Molly-Ann underwent 6 month of intense chemotherapy and was discharged in March 2000.  Three months later on the 3rd of July the Leukaemia was back and Molly-Ann's only chance was for a Bone Marrow Transplant before September 2000 as there was a limit as to how many courses of chemotherapy her body could withstand.

Unfortunately, as is the case with about 50% of patients, Molly's tissue type was rare and no match was found on any register anywhere in the world.  Molly's parents, family and friends mounted a massive publicity campaign which captured the world press and new donors came forward in their thousands.  Fortunately our prayers were answered and with less than 4 weeks to go to the treatment deadline a lady donor was found in America.

This angel donated some bone marrow in America which was flown overnight to England and Molly-Ann had her life-saving transplant, dripped in like a normal blood transfusion, on the 29th September 2000 after being previously "conditioned" with chemotherapy and total body irradiation.  

Molly-Ann was discharged from hospital before Christmas and enjoyed some time at home (in isolation) before starting back at school after Easter 2001.  Her parents Mandy & Paul  are delighted that she is doing so well, but frightened to be too confident with all the set backs they have had in the past. Molly's new bone marrow seems to be working well and generating plenty of blood cells but she is not out of the woods yet, there is still a long way to go before we will know if the Leukaemia is beaten and the transplant has been successful so please keep thinking of her and praying for her, it really does make a difference.

              

Whilst Molly-Ann was in hospital her Dad's colleagues at work organised a tandem cycle ride from John O’Groats to Land’s End which was a tremendous success and raised over £30,000 for Leukaemia Research. Ken Wood and Mike Hainsworth can rightly be very proud of themselves. Neither of them are spring chickens and by the end knees and hips were playing up.  Fortunately it was Mike’s right knee and Ken’s left hip so between them they could manage a full revolution of the pedals, but they did it and what a wonderful achievement.

It addition to the money going to Leukaemia Research, donations will be going to several other charities that have helped Molly-Ann, Mandy and I more directly.  These include the Candlelighters who provide funds for the children’s cancer ward at St. James Hospital; the Sick Children’s Trust who provided me with free accommodation in Eckersley House for the last 14 months we spent in Leeds; the Anthony Nolan Trust for helping to find Molly-Ann’s donor in the USA and to the British Bone Marrow Appeal who raise money to fund the National Blood Service bone marrow register.

The family have struggled with many problems over the months since being told that Molly-Ann needed a transplant and that she had a rare tissue type. The Anthony Nolan Trust do an amazing job getting people on to their bone marrow register but when they told us it would take 6-12 weeks to get people on to the register we began to despair; it was just not going to be fast enough for Molly-Ann.

So they turned to the National Blood Service and helped them to discover that they also had the facility to test and register potential donors. Initially it was only available at a few sites throughout the country but within days and with the wholehearted support of the NBS managers and nurses, hundreds of samples were being collected everyday.

You can imagine our amazement to discover that this part of the NBS was also funded by charity and that in order to for the samples to be tested it may have been necessary for the charity to raise a further £200,000 to cover the costs. We understand that the Government are going to pick up the additional costs of the Molly-Ann appeal samples but I have not had that confirmed yet.

At present the British Bone Marrow Donor Appeal charity formed by the parents of two Leukaemia suffers 15 years ago generates £250,000 per annum to fund 5-10,000 donor registrations per year. The original aim was to encourage the government of the day to take bone marrow transplants seriously. 15 years later not much has changed and Mandy & I would like to help encourage the Government to take some action. There are currently 3 million active blood donors and we would like 1 million of them to be registered potential bone marrow donors. All it takes is a teaspoon of blood and some money. With a million potential donors the statistics show that a thousand lives could be saved every year. A thousand families that won't have to live through all the agony we went through hoping to find a donor in America or Germany.