The gift of life has been made by a four-year-old Skipton girl to her big sister.

Mary-Kate Coe is blissfully unaware that her simple bone marrow extraction operation last month has given six-year-old Victoria a future.

If Victoria hadn't had a sibling the chances of finding a compatible donor to cure her rare form of leukaemia would have been one in 80,000.

With chemotherapy alone, her chances of surviving the next five years would have been less than 40 per cent. But now she is looking forward to going back to St Stephen's school in Skipton after Mary-Kate was found to be a perfect match.

Parents Gillian and Peter Coe were knocked for six when a routine blood test back in January revealed Victoria's leukaemia.

Five months of chemotherapy in Leeds were in vain so the compatibility tests that had been carried out on the whole family suddenly became very important.

Gillian said: "The only chance for her was a bone marrow transplant. Thank goodness we found Mary-Kate was a perfect match."

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