A BRAVE youngster celebrated a year since her life-saving bone marrow transplant by encouraging her classmates to be as kind to others as her donor was.

Chloe Prosser, nine, was first diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) when she was five, after complaining of soreness in her knee.

After having her illness confirmed at Great Ormond Street Hospital, she then spent six months in Addenbrooke's having treatment and the family thought she had won her battle with the disease as she entered remission.

But in January last year she relapsed and had to return to Addenbrooke's for three bouts of chemotherapy before a suitable match was found and the transplant was done at the Royal Marsden hospital in Surrey.

Mum Samantha said: "Her bone marrow came from the USA and all we know is it is from a 30-year-old American.

"You send a card but you cannot have any more contact than that.

"Chloe was unwell and AML is an aggressive type of leukaemia and we knew if it did come back then she would have to have a transplant."

Chloe and her friends took time out at Home Farm Primary School for an Act of Kindness Day where everyone offered small acts of kindness in exchange for donations to Anthony Nolan, a charity set up to save the lives of people with blood cancer, and carries our pioneering research into stem cell transplants.

The pupils hung their acts as leaves on a kindness tree which had been put up in the school.

Samantha hailed the day as a massive success which raised more than £200.

She said: "It was an absolutely brilliant day.

"All the children brought in their acts of kindness and some of them were really sweet."

Despite Chloe's illness, Samantha, of Poets Corner, Colchester, said she had coped incredibly well.

She said: "She seems a lot older than she is.

"She was always the one in the hospitals and trying to help the nurses looking after the ones who were even younger than her.

"Chloe liked it because it kept her busy as well, she like helping to organise people.

"If you were in the hospital during her stay then you would definitely have remembered her."