PUBLIC swimming baths, camping holidays and days out in the woods are trips most children take for granted and enjoy.

But for Alex Creamer, 14, and his 11-year-old brother Adam, such innocent adventures are so risky they are avoided at all costs.

The brothers both have a rare genetic blood disorder which means they cannot fight certain bacterial and fungal infections. That leaves them vulnerable to bone infections, pneumonia and abscesses on vital organs.

Even a trip to the playground could be life-threatening for Adam and Alex, as contact with fungal spores in the bark chippings could leave them prone to severe infection.

The boys were born with Chronic Granulomatous Disorder, but their parents Lynne and Geoff, of Glenmore, Clayton-le-Woods, were unaware there was a problem until Alex was four and Adam was 15 months old.

The one-in-a-million disorder was diagnosed 10 years ago after Alex, who had recently started school, seemed to become progressively weaker and often complained of stomach pains. A doctor could find nothing wrong with him but a few weeks later Lynne was bathing the youngster and discovered a large lump sticking out of his abdomen.

Alex was taken back to his GP who immediately referred him to the Royal Preston Hospital. Staff there wondered if it was a cancerous tumour but biopsies and scans at the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital at Pendlebury proved otherwise. Haematologists discovered the genetic disorder and found out it had been passed to them by Lynne -- who describes herself as a "new mutation" as her own mum was checked and found not to be a carrier.

"My dad had died by that time and we cannot believe, although he died quite young at 58, that he would have survived in his era with the condition, so he can't possibly have had it. It started with me -- obviously things have to start somewhere," Lynne said.

Now the boys have a daily cocktail of medicines and antibiotic tablets to keep the bugs at bay before they leave the house. Adam is a pupil at Clayton-le-Woods Primary School and Alex, the more weary of the two because he was not diagnosed as early in life as his brother, visits a tutor at Euxton.

Lynne, 44, said: "They have to steer clear of places that are damp and, although they can go into the garden, they shouldn't really get involved in gardening.

"It is recommended that they do not go to public swimming baths and Adam has only just started having swimming lessons at a private swimming pool.

"One of the problems is contact sports. It is very hard to stop Adam so we let him get on with it and tell his friends not to go in so hard."

The family suffered a scare when Adam fell down the stairs when he was four and fractured his skull. He began to lose fluid from his brain -- a worrying enough situation for anyone, but in his case it also meant bacteria could get in and prove fatal. He was rushed to hospital but recovered thanks to intensive treatment of intravenous antibiotics.

Lynne said: "We had never heard of CGD before we discovered Alex had it and we were terrified. If you look historically it was definitely fatal and children did not survive into adulthood. When we were first told about the condition the doctors were looking at old data but antibiotics are improving all the time."

Lynne is keen to raise awareness of this year's Jeans for Genes Day next Friday, an annual moneyspinner which involves thousands of employees nationwide donning jeans instead of their usual work clothes and paying £1 for the privilege.

Since the event started six years ago businesses and companies across the country have raised more than £9.5 million for five charities which raise money for research into children's genetic diseases.

These include Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity, the Cystic Fibrosis Trust and the CGD Research Trust, of which the boys' father Geoff, 44, is the new chairman.

With medical advances travelling in leaps and bounds over the past few years, Lynne and Geoff are hopeful that a programme of gene replacement therapy, which would be similar to a bone marrow transplant, could help their sons -- and thousands of other children -- in the future.

Anyone who would like to sign up for Jeans for Genes Day can telephone the freephone hotline on 0800 980 4800 or visit www.jeansforgenes.com for a free fundraising pack.

Jeans for Genes, which is backed by celebrities including musicians Robbie Williams and Atomic Kitten, helps to fund pioneering projects looking for ways to alleviate and even cure some of the 4,000 genetic disorders affecting children.