A global search for a bone marrow donor has this week resulted in a near-perfect match so Melody has begun an intensive course of chemotherapy ready for the transplant on May 8.

The four-month-old was born with a rare genetic condition called severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) which means a common cold could kill her.

She is currently in a germ-free enviroment – a “bubble ward” – at a hospital in Newcastle until the donor bone marrow restores her immune system.

Her worried parents Lauren, 23, and Scott, 28, of Briggs Avenue, Castleford, say they are relieved to have transplant date but face an anxious few weeks.

Lauren said: “I’m nervous about the chemotherapy because she’s going to get very poorly. She’s been doing well lately too. I think that’s what is hard, because she’s been so well, it will be awful to see her going backwards.

“She’s just got a head of hair, which she will lose, and she’ll get sores in her mouth but she’s still fed through a tube so she’ll be able to eat. She will also get sickness and diarrhoea and will be on extra drugs for that.”

The donor found this week was a better match to Melody than the previous donor matches – of bone marrow and cord blood, reported in the Express in April.

Lauren said: “They kept checking the donor list and this was a new donor. All I know is it is man of about 38 and from the north of England.

“Doctors said he’s a 99.9 per cent match and they’re happy to go with that.

“The doctors have said Melody has 90 per cent or higher chance of surviving chemotherapy but when you hear that, you think there’s a ten per cent chance she will die. But she would have died without it anyway. So what can you do?

“It’s the chemotherapy more than the transplant that I’m worried about. The transplant is like a big bag of blood that they hook up to her, and she’s had so many blood transfusions that it will be like one of them.”