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Download A Chinese soldier has donated 200 milliliters of blood with a high density of hematopoietic stem cells to a leukemia patient in South Korea. Xu Shiyu, 26, a soldier from the armored regiment of Jinan Military Area Command, had his blood extracted by a blood cell separation machine on Wednesday and Thursday at the Air Force General Hospital of the PLA in Beijing. The blood will be transfused into a leukemia patient in South Korea. Staff members from the Korean Marrow Donor Program came to Beijing on Thursday morning to take the donated blood back to Seoul. In October 2007, when Xu was a college student in East China's Shandong province, he had his blood sample taken and recorded at the provincial marrow donor center to become a candidate donor for stem cells. He received a phone call from the China Marrow Donor Program in April, when a South Korean patient whose blood sample matched his sought help from China. He decided to donate after hearing about the case. "Donating stem cells is not a big issue for me, but it could help the South Korean patient get rid of the disease and regain health," he said after going through the procedure on Thursday. Xu said that he did not feel much physical discomfort during the blood extraction process. Zhu Peiyu, a doctor at the hospital, said donating stem cells will not harm the donor's health. "Stem cell donors don't have to extract their marrow, and what they donate is 55 to 200 milliliters of blood, which is no more than half of the amount of a common blood donation," she said. | 
