A Quebec family in need of a bone marrow donor for a six-year-old girl is desperately calling on the province to broaden its donation program.

Last week, doctors told Amanda Sokoloff that her daughter, Ellie, had been diagnosed with leukemia for the second time in her life.

“It is the most cruel punishment that exists in the world. Nothing is worse,” Sokoloff  told CTV Montreal.

Her child is one of about 50,000 people around the world looking for transplant donors outside of their immediate relatives.

The Hampstead, Que. family is asking that Héma-Québec, a non-profit organization which manages the blood supply for the province, broaden its donor program and advertise for bone marrow like it does for blood.

“The more options the better,” she said. “It's a terrifying thought — that person could be next door. We don't know who it could come from.”

Before battling cancer, Ellie was like most children. She loved playing with her dogs and going to dance camp over the summer.

Sokoloff says a change in the province’s bone marrow program could give her child a fighting chance and a return to that normal life.

“I promised her, since she was born, my most important job was being a mom and taking care of her and this is how I'm trying to do that right now,” Sokoloff said.

But the search for the right donor isn’t going to be easy because they would need to share the same key genetic markers as the recipient. Héma-Québec spokesperson Larent Paul Menard said finding the perfect match is like finding the winning numbers for the Lotto 649 draw.

“So it's not that easy because we have over 15 million combinations,” Menard told CTV Montreal.

To expand the pool of potential matches, Héma-Québec regularly conducts drives looking for bone marrow donors but, so far, only three per cent of people on that list are a potential match for Sokoloff.

Anyone between the ages of 18 and 35 can send for a bone marrow testing kit and generally complete the process in under a few hours.

Getting bone marrow tested could 'literally could save a life'

But Menard said taking the time to do that could “literally could save a life.”

The test consist of people swabbing the inside of their cheek with four swabs, which are then sent to a testing facility and end with their information placed on a worldwide list of donors. In Quebec, there's about 40 thousand registered bone marrow donors.

And if a match is found, the donor’s marrow needs to be extracted and transplanted to the recipient within 48 hours for the greatest chance of success.

Héma-Québec has said it has considered taking swabs from young people when they donate blood but that program is not in place yet.

So until that a donor is found, the Sokoloffs have little choice but to continue leaning on the example set by their six-year-old.

“She has found strength none of us knew was even there,” her mother said.

With a report from CTV Montreal’s Kelly Greig