CITY firefighters hope to help in the fight to save the life of a schoolgirl.

Their drive to recruit bone marrow donors – to help Ayesha Siddiqui and patients like her – is being held on Friday next week at Glasgow Central Mosque's Community Hall.

Fire bosses hope volunteers will come forward to join the bone marrow register, which could help the eight-year-old.

As the Evening Times has already reported, the Newton Mearns girl is likely to need a bone marrow transplant to cure acute lymphobl-astic leukemia.

But a worldwide search of 15million people on registers has failed to find a match.

Because Ayesha is of mixed race, it's even harder to find a suitable donor and a call has been made for men from across west Scotland, who are under 40 from an ethnic or mixed race background, to go to the event.

It takes 10 minutes to fill in forms and give a saliva sample, and people can visit between noon and 5pm.

Strathclyde Fire and Rescue deputy assistant chief officer Ally Boyle said: "We have a strategic partnership with the Anthony Nolan cancer charity, which has been running for three years.

"Over that time we have added nearly 4500 people to the register, and have had five successful matches.

"We began by running clinics in fire stations. As our chief put it, our firefighters save lives and this was an opportunity to get the public to come in and be lifesavers themselves.

"We also held the record for the biggest single event, which was for Ryan Ferguson from East Kilbride, when 1074 people joined.

"Ryan found a match and, although we can't say it came from that particular clinic, we have had more than 50 people who have been called up as matches."

Ayesha's dad Nadeem, a cancer consultant at Glasgow Royal Infirm-ary, said discovering last year that Ayesha had the illness was "like a bad dream".

Doctors say she may need a transplant, but none of the family, including brother Saif, 4, is suitable.

Ayesha's mum Noreen said: "The way Strathclyde Fire and Rescue are supporting Anthony Nolan is so important. They are doing an amazing job.

"Despite all the hard work so far we still haven't found a match."

sarah.swain@ heraldandtimes.co.uk