LITTLE Ally Kim desperately needs a life-saving stem cell transplant and it could be someone from New Malden or Raynes Park who saves him.

Ally is just two years old but has already spent much of his life in hospitals, including Great Ormond Street Hospital, because he has a rare, genetic disorder called chronic granulomatous disorder (CGD).

With a blood stem cell transplant, Ally could live a full and healthy life. Without one, he could die from a simple infection. Ally is of Korean descent, so a matching donor will only be found in the Korean, Chinese, Macau, Japanese, Mongolian or Taiwanese communities.

The Chronic Granulomatous Disorder Society and DKMS, part of the UK blood stem cell register, will be carrying out testing to find a matching donor on Saturday 21 January, 2017, between 10am and 4pm, at the New Malden Methodist Church, 49 High Street, New Malden, KT3 4BY.

The test involves just a simple cheek swab. The sample cells are then sent to a lab to see if they match Ally’s. Potential donors need to be between 17 and 55 years old. Ally's family is urging local people to come and be tested.

Dad Andrew, 36, a medical research engineer, says: "Ally loves kicking the football, dancing, and trying to jump – though he can’t actually get off the ground. "He has been in and out of hospital all of his life and doctors have put him at the top of the list for a transplant. But first he needs a match. Ally has been fighting infection since he was born in September 2014 but it wasn’t until he was eighteen months old that he was tested for CGD."

Andrew recalls: "They had only seen two cases of CGD in the last 10 years, so it hadn't even registered as a possibility before that.” Ally’s family, Andrew, mum Judy and brother Micah, five, are originally from San Francisco but moved to Oxford where his mum is a university lecturer. The family’s search for a donor has been worldwide but now New Malden might give Ally hope. Of the 1,138,564 registered donors in the UK, just 0.5 per cent are East Asian. Andrew says: “There’s a huge community of Asian people out there who need donors but only a small donor pool. We urge people of New Malden to come forward.’ For more information go to http://www.cgdsociety.org/allysfight.

Based on information supplied by Sam Carlisle.