SHANGHAI, May 31 -- About 80 percent of local leukemia patients are expected to find donors from the nation's stem cell donors' bank and the city's umbilical cord blood bank by 2010, said local health officials yesterday.

"Our aim is to establish a bank with over 10,000 samples by 2010, when the stem cell bank will have one million volunteers at that time," said Zheng Bin, vice director of Shanghai Umbilical Cord Blood Bank. "Then the possibility to find a match will be about 80 percent from the two banks."

Officials from Shanghai Red Cross and the cord blood bank met students yesterday from Caowang County Central Primary School in Jiading District to celebrate tomorrow's Children's Day with a recovered leukemia patient.

Li Jiaye, a 12-year-old girl, received an umbilical cord blood transplant and is now back at school. She was diagnosed with leukemia in August, 2005. The family found a matched sample at the cord blood bank and Li received the transplant in April last year, thanks to donations by relatives and friends. "She has recovered very well and stopped taking anti-rejection medication early this year," said grandmother Tang Meizhen. "She is lucky enough to undergo a successful transplant."

There are 40,000 new leukemia patients in China every year, half of them children.