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A Chinese teenager suffering from leukaemia faces a race against time to find her birth parents so they can donate much-needed bone marrow.
Doctors told 18-year-old Peng Xin that her only hope, after the surprising diagnosis, was a bone-marrow transplant, and her parents would be her best chance of success.
When she told her family about the diagnosis the teen, from Xinyang in Central China’s Henan province, was shocked to discover she was adopted.
And now the schoolgirl faces a desperate task to track down her biological parents in the hope that a bone-marrow donation from one of them will save her life.
Doctors have told Xin that without a bone-marrow transplant, chemotherapy can extend her life for only about 10 months.
Only a transplant from a close relative with a matching DNA profile can help to possibly cure her.
Peng’s adoptive mother told local media they’d decided not to tell her she was adopted after taking her in when she was young.
"I already had a son and a daughter and we were not wealthy, but she was so poor and we really felt sorry for her so we took her in and raised her as our own daughter.
"We never planned to tell her anything but now that she had to find out in this way, it's made her even more depressed. It’s difficult for her to take it all in."
She said they were hoping to now support their daughter by helping to find her biological parents.
Xin’s pals have also compiled a video in the hope of tracking down her birth parents.
