AT FIRST glance 22-year-old Samrick Singh Bahia appears like any other University of Worcester student in his final year.

He’s fit - he has played rugby for the university and is playing for his home club at Wolverhampton – enjoys spending time with his friends and is looking forward to finishing his business degree and putting his studies to good use. He also works 40 hours a week in his family’s convenience store business.

But three years ago it was a very different story. In his second year at the university Samrick began to lose his energy. He kept falling asleep at the university, he found it hard to train for the rugby team and he was getting tonsillitis on a regular basis. On Christmas Day 2012 he passed out at home and his mum noticed a yellowish tinge to his complexion.

He came back to Worcester to resume his studies in January 2013 and thought he had just gone down with a bug and he would be fine.

He had spoken to his rugby coach about giving up because he found training too hard and the coach suggested he went to the doctor and got some blood tests.

Samrick explained that his blood count was all over the place and he was told to go into New Cross Hospital Wolverhampton for further tests.

“I spent a week there having loads of tests and at the end of the week the doctor told me the good news was that they knew what the problem was, but the bad news was that it was cancer,” said Samrick.

“I was scared. I did not know what the hell was going on.” He also had no idea what type of cancer he had. He kept trying to think positively – he knew men with testicular cancer had a 90 per cent of being cured. “I did not think it was a major one.”

Samrick was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and underwent an intense period of chemotherapy in the hospital. “I had two and a half months in the hospital and then further treatment while living at home.” This lasted another six months.

During that time his immune system was extremely low and he had to be very careful about picking up any infections. “I went to hospital eight or nine times because I caught an infection.”

Samrick took a year out from studying for his treatment and to recover but he did not know if the chemotherapy would work and if it didn’t there was a chance he might need a bone marrow transplant.

“I always had in the back of my mind that I might need a bone marrow transplant if it came back. I thought my two sisters and my brother might be a match but they weren’t.”

He said the chances of getting a match varies according to the ethnic background – the chances for white people are much higher because there are more white people on the donor register.

With this in mind Samrick, whose family is originally from India, talked to his dad about doing some charitable work to raise money for leukaemia charities and also raise awareness of the need for more people to sign up on the bone marrow transplant register.

Samrick and his family organised a charity ball - based on the theme Hollywood verses Bollywood - at the Park Hall Hotel Wolverhampton, to which 550 people attended. The night raised £32,000 and a whopping 320 of the guests signed up that night to go on the bone marrow register. The money raised was split equally between the charity Delete Blood Cancer and Focus Leukaemia.

He and his family repeated the charity ball a year later – at the Royal Banqueting Suite in Wolverhampton – attracting 800 guests and raising a total of £62,000 which went to Delete Blood Cancer. He and his family decided to wait a year before doing another charity ball but Samrick, who has been free of cancer for nearly two years, says: “Each year, I will always do something to keep the money coming in to charity.”

He was also nominated for the ITV Pride of Britain Awards and won both the West Midlands and the Midlands region award and has recently received an award from the Delete Blood Cancer charity for his outstanding contribution towards fund-raising and his work for the organisation.

An additional 500 people have signed up to the bone marrow transplant register as a result of Samrick and his family’s efforts.

Also Samrick’s illness and his charity work has inspired his fellow students at the University of Worcester. His university friend 21 year-old Lewis Arnold, vice president of the Students Union, registered as a donor and was a match for someone needing blood stem cells. He had his stem celled collected at a London hospital.

Now two other students at the university, who again were inspired by Samrick, registered and have been matched with people needing blood stem cells.

• Finding matching donors for those who need a blood stem cell donation for their survival is difficult because there are more than 8,500 known HLA (human leukocyte antigen) tissue characteristics that can occur in thousands of combinations.

• The donor and patient must have at least eight HLA characteristics in common to be considered a match but ideally should have 10.

• Anyone can register in five minutes online and request a cheek swab kit that will enable them to do their own tissue test to become a potential blood stem cell donor through the Delete Blood Cancer UK website: www.deletebloodcancer.org.uk