A Bradford girl had to fight for her life after lapsing into a coma just weeks after a bone marrow transplant which could now be at risk.

Munibah Akram had been recovering well from her transplant operation when her relatives said she had an allergic reaction to medicine, became critically ill and went into a coma.

The ten-year-old spent about a week in intensive care at St James's Hospital in Leeds where her transplant was carried out in July after a three-year search for a suitable donor.

Now she has regained consciousness and has been moved back onto a ward.

But her cousin Athiquea Mir said her kidneys have failed and the bone marrow transplant could be in jeopardy.

"Munibah had an allergic reaction to medication," she said.

"She's not in a very good state at the moment. She's not really stable. She can't eat or drink but she can speak.

"Her parents are really shocked about it - they're still praying she gets better. We don't know whether she will recover. The doctors are still figuring out why it happened to her."

Athiquea said Munibah had returned to her family home at Scotchman Road, Heaton, for a couple of days shortly before she took a turn for the worse.

Jean Baum, ward administrator at St James's, said Munibah was in a comfortable condition.

"She's obviously improved, otherwise she wouldn't have come off intensive care. At the moment we're just trying to get her back to her happy little self."

Munibah, who would have died without a bone marrow transplant, suffered from a rare genetic condition called Fanconis Anaemia which affects the immune system. It claimed the life of one brother, Hamad, but another brother, Saheeb, was saved by a successful bone marrow transplant.

Munibah's transplant was the first to be done at St James's using bone marrow cells transplanted from an adult to a child using a relatively new procedure called peripheral blood stem cell transplant.

The procedure removes the necessity for the donor to have a general anaesthetic because instead of bone marrow being taken from the bone, bone marrow cells are extracted from the blood and injected into the recipient's blood.

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