A GOVERNMENT Minister has told the family of leukaemia victim Molly-Ann Barnett that many of the thousands of blood donations received on her behalf may not be processed in time to save her.

The six-year-old, whose father Paul Barnett part-owns Pocklington firm VMS, faces a desperate race against time to find a suitable donor for a bone marrow transplant.

But health officials concede there is a backlog of work due to the thousands of people who have responded to the Molly-Ann appeal.

Health minister Gisela Stuart said staff at the service's three labs had been working additional shifts and at weekends to get through the backlog caused by the huge interest in Molly-Ann's case.

She added: "They are doing as much as they can, but there is a limit to exactly how much that can be done in this sort of situation."