Girl from poor family with debilitating illness weighs about half that of a healthy teenager; family thank kind strangers for cash donations
2-MIN READ2-MINFran Luin BeijingPublished: 6:00pm, 12 May 2026A 15-year-old Chinese girl who has been suffering from a severe blood disorder most of her life is slowly recovering after receiving a transplant from her newborn brother.
Xiaoyan from southern China’s Guangdong province is now only 140cm tall, and weighs just 25kg.
She was diagnosed with thalassemia, an inherited blood disorder, at three months old.
Her father, a construction worker, and her jobless mother did not arrange standard treatment for her except for regular blood transfusions.
It was only when Xiaoyan’s spleen became so enlarged and needed to be removed in 2018, that she received media attention and began receiving proper treatment.
They advised them to find a match from a stem cell registry, or give birth to another child and use their cord blood.
