A six-month-old boy with a one-in-a-million blood disorder has found the match he needed for a potentially life-saving stem cell transplant.

Austin Brown was born with Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome and is being treated at Great Ormond Hospital with regular blood transfusions.

But until recently his family still needed to find a healthy person with the same tissue type willing to help replace and repair his damaged cells.

Parents Lewis and Kasia, of Lower Higham Road, Gravesend, enlisted the help of blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan to find a suitable donor.

“Austin is half Polish, and his donor is most likely to have a similar background to him,” said Mr Brown.

The details of what happens next are being worked out but in the meantime the family is calling for other people to help those in need.

Mr Brown added: “My wife and I are calling on everyone to please join the Anthony Nolan register.

“You will have an eternally grateful father and mother for the remainder of your life.”

The family finally found a donor this week. Mr Brown couldn’t be a donor for his son because he has epilepsy, but has been doing his bit by putting on events to raise awareness of Anthony Nolan’s work.

On Monday, June 19, he will play 72 holes of golf in one day at Deangate Ridge Golf & Sports Complex.

He hopes it will be the first of many events to raise both awareness and money for the charity.

He continued: “Austin is full of beans. You would never know, to look at him, there’s anything wrong with him. He’s nearly crawling.

“When he reaches milestones like that and you share little moments as a family it’s truly like a ray of sunshine.”

Money raised for Anthony Nolan funds research to make bone marrow and blood stem cell transplants more successful, pays for donors to be tissue-typed, and gathers vital information for patients and families in need.

The charity was named after a boy of the same name who died from the same condition that Austin has back in 1971.

It was set up by his mother after the difficulty she had in finding a suitable donor.

If you are aged between 16 and 30, you can join the charity’s register online at anthonynolan.org.

To donate to Mr Brown’s campaign, visit the family's JustGiving site.