Baby Sister’s Cord Blood to the Rescue

When two-year-old Tommy Bacon was diagnosed with juvenile myelomonocytic leukaemia (JMML) – a rare cancer affecting only 1-2 children per million – his only chance of survival was a stem cell transplant. Tommy’s own cord blood had not been stored at birth. But when his baby sister Aria was born, his parents arranged to have her cord blood collected – and it turned out to be a perfect match. Tommy received the transplant at Perth Children’s Hospital and is now cancer-free.

Parents sometimes ask whether it’s important to store cord blood from each child, or whether one child’s stored unit is enough. Siblings have a 25% chance of being a perfect match, a 50% chance of being a partial match, and a 25% chance of not being a match at all. In Tommy’s case, it was his sister’s cord blood — collected as a precaution — that saved his life.

Read Tommy’s story here.