"IT'S the best news ever" – that was a headteacher's reaction to a big victory for a five-year-old boy in his battle with leukaemia.

Kate Wilcock, Pitmaston Primary School head, was delighted that pupil Oscar Saxelby-Lee had undergone a successful round of chemotherapy.

The Worcester boy is still in desperate need of a stem cell donor as he continues to fight T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia – but he is now finally responding to treatment.

Mrs Wilcock told the Worcester News that Oscar's mum, Olivia Saxelby, had told her of the positive progress.

"His mum sent me a text message while I was sat in my office," she said. "It was the best news ever. For us here, it’s something positive because it’s been a really tough ride.

"It’s the news we needed desperately, that Oscar is responding to the chemo. There were definitely some tears there and now we are just waiting for a donor to be found.”

Thousands of people have been swabbed and registered at events across the city to find a tissue match for Oscar, but he needs to be almost cancer free first for a transplant to work.

On Thursday, after three failed rounds of treatment, parents Jamie Lee and Olivia were told their son’s level of leukaemia cells had been drastically reduced.

Jamie, 26, said: “Absolutely buzzing with today’s MRD results. Oscar was 30 per cent high risk when he was first diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia T-cell. He’s done three rounds of different chemo and unfortunately that percentage didn’t change which meant the chemo wasn’t doing anything to our little warrior.

“We were told Oscar needs to be 0.5 per cent to go in to transplant, so they put Oscar on a really high intense chemo for a week.

“Oscar was a true warrior and was fighting all of the side effects that comes with this chemo. It felt like it would be impossible to get it down to that 0.5 per cent but Oscar did it."

The couple, of McIntyre Road, Worcester, found out Oscar had the rare form of leukaemia on December 28 last year.

Prior to this week, Oscar had endured four weeks of intensive chemotherapy and more than 20 blood transfusions, before doctors decided his illness is so aggressive that a donor must be found. If you are between 17 and 55, register for a swab test kit at dkms.org.uk