A 21-year-old Chinese university student from eastern China's Jiangxi Province has twice donated her stem cells to save a patient in Belgium.
In February, Jiang Minlin, a student in Shangrao Normal Institute of Jiangxi, donated 227 millimeters of hemopoietic stem cells (HSCs) to a patient with a blood disease in Belgium, whose human leukocyte antigen (HLA) type matched Jiang's. On August 8, Jiang donated another 65 millimeters of lymphocyte cells to the same patient to help her fight rejection of the initial cells.
Both donations were made at the Air Force General Hospital in Beijing.
Jiang signed up to be a stem cell donor with the China Marrow Donor Program (CMDP) in 2014. Her stem cells was found to match the Belgian patient's in December last year.
The success rate of stem cells matches is extremely low -- somewhere between 0.01 percent and 0.25 percent .
"The donation staff told me that the recipient is about the age of my mother. I'm really happy to help save a life," she said.
There are over 2.2 million potential donors registered with the CMDP in China.
In 2006, a volunteer from Shanghai became China's first stem cell donor. Since then, China has performed HSC transplants for over 5,000 patients at home and more than 200 overseas.
