Is a type of cancer that happens in

the blood or bone marrow.

In your blood you get too many

white cells

Sometimes there are mutations in the genes responsible for the growth of the cell and for keeping them healthy. This is when cancer occurs. The genes are in the nucleus of each cell. Usually when our body need new cells, there is an orderly process for cell growth and division. When old cells die out, new cells grow and replace them.

• The main reason cancer can be difficult to cure is that it can spread to a different part of the body from where it started. The cancer that grows where it first started in the body is called the 'primary cancer'. The place a cancer spreads to and then starts growing is called the 'secondary cancer' or 'metastasis'.

The symptoms can be an increase in

fevers and infections. Leukemia affects the bone marrow. With leukemia, you can bleed very easy, have a poor appetite, or have pain in the bones or joints which sometimes causes a limp.

Patients are treated with chromotherapy, which is the administration of cancer -killing drugs into the cerebrospinal fluid around the brain and spinal cord.

Radiation treatments, which use high-energy rays to shrink tumors and keep cancer cells from growing, are also used as treatments.

Some forms of childhood leukemia have a remission of up to 90%.

• About 256,000 adults and children have contracted some type of leukemia.

• About 209,000have died from it.