Child cured of rare genetic illness

Rhys Harris, who was facing death, beat all the odds to survive treatment which has given him a new immune system.

But he was forced to live in a futuristic plastic bubble in sterile isolation for weeks - with parents Kevin and Dawn banned from hugging or kissing him.

The future looked bleak for Rhys, of Newbridge, south Wales, after he was diagnosed with an incurable genetic disease called Nemo when aged three.

The disease, of which there have been only 40 diagnosed cases since 2001, crippled his immune system leading, in his case, to the contraction of an incurable form of TB.

Doctors decided his only hope was to give him a new immune system using the sort of medical techniques that were once the stuff of science fiction.

Even then experts at Newcastle General Hospital, a centre of excellence in the field, gave Rhys only a less than one in three chance of survival.

Nothing would have been possible without the worldwide search for a bone marrow donor for Rhys which ultimately found a match in the United States. Before Rhys could undergo the transplant, doctors had to kill his own marrow using chemotherapy.

The successful transplant was followed by two months of sterile isolation as Rhys recovered and his new immune system began to establish itself.

Mario Abinun, consultant paediatric immunologist at Newcastle General Hospital, who oversaw the treatment, said: "He has already gotten over a few hurdles and all the indicators and laboratory reports show he is doing fine. But we will have to wait until some time in the autumn before we can give him a clean bill of health."