A popular influencer with over 3.4 million followers has raised over USD 650,000 in donations in just five days so that a seven-year-old boy called Kevin can get his leukaemia treatment.

Santiago Maratea is an influencer in Argentina with over 3.4 million Instagram followers and he has reportedly raised over ARS 72 million (USD 654,000; GBP 496,000; EUR 596,000) in donations in just five days so that Kevin, who is from the town of Corral de Bustos, in the central Argentine state of Cordoba, can be treated for leukaemia in Barcelona, which is located in Catalonia, in north-eastern Spain.

Maratea, 29, raised the money after Leonela Bossa, Kevin’s mother, reportedly told local media on Wednesday, 16th March, after having created their fundraising account on Instagram on 14th March: “We are afraid because we need a lot of money and time is running out.”

After hearing about the difficult predicament the family found itself in, the popular influencer started campaigning and by Monday, 21 March, at approximately 8pm, the official fundraising campaign on Instagram (www.instagram.com/todosporkevinok/) announced that it had collected enough money for the treatment to be able to start.

The news is a great source of hope for the family, who were told by doctors in Argentina that after Kevin relapsed in November last year having initially overcome the disease a first time before it re-emerged nearly a year later, there was nothing left that they could do for him except for him palliative care.

But after looking into the matter, the seven-year-old’s family discovered that there was a treatment in Spain that might give them a shot at seeing Kevin cured.

The only problem was that the treatment is extremely expensive and the longer they waited, the less Kevin’s chances were that the treatment would work.

Kevin reportedly travelled to Barcelona with his mother and father on Tuesday to begin his treatment.