A RECRUITMENT clinic set up to find a bone marrow match for a seven-year-old with leukaemia has been inundated with volunteers.

The clinic was set up at St Bede's Primary School, in Marske, east Cleveland, on Tuesday afternoon to find a donor for pupil Tom Holt, who was recently diagnosed with leukaemia.

He is now undergoing a five-week course of chemotherapy at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary.

His school was happy to act as the venue for the Anthony Nolan Trust's donor recruitment clinic, where volunteers turned up, filled out forms and had a blood sample taken.

Tom's mother, Belinda, said: "It was my sister who organised the clinic. She really felt the need to do something to help me and my family.

"So she tried to get some more people on to the bone marrow register."

For more information about becoming a bone marrow donor and joining more than 320,000 people on the register, call (0901) 882 2234 or go to www.anthonynolan.org. uk

Potential donors should be aged 18 to 40, be in good health and weigh more than eight stones.

Pregnant women or women with children under 12 months cannot donate.

The bone marrow donation procedure is conducted under general anaesthetic, although increasingly, blood stem cells are extracted from donors by needles in both arms, with no general anaesthetic needed.