An official with the Red Cross Society of China said the country needs more donors for its bone marrow databank to help Chinese people suffering from blood diseases.

Jiang Yiman, vice chairman of the society, said in Beijing on Wednesday that China currently has more than four million leukaemia patients and the number is rising by 40,000 annually.

More donors are needed for the databank to help leukaemia patients, said Jiang.

The Red Cross Society of China built the China Bone Marrow Databank in 1992, aiming to help millions of Chinese with blood diseases.

"Our target is to collect data on one million donors by the end of 2010 so as to help more patients find compatible marrow data," said Jiang.

The bone marrow databank currently covers around 500,000 potential donors.

Jiang called on companies to help fund the databank, and people of the right age to donate hematopoietic stem cells for the databank.

The establishment of the databank is also helping overseas patients. In 2005, the databank helped two patients in the United States, one in Singapore and one in Hong Kong find compatible hematopoietic stem cells.

Stem cell transplants have proved effective in treating blood diseases like sickle-cell anemia, leukemia and other disorders. The matching of donor and recipient for human leucocyte antigens (HLA) is pivotal for the success of blood stem cell transplants.

Different races and nationalities differ in HLA. Experts believe that as China has 56 nationalities and a population of 1.3 billion, the bone marrow databank is of great value not only to China, but also to Asia and the world.

(Xinhua News Agency March 29, 2007)