Bid to save specialist centre

Families in the Advertiser area whose children owe their lives to a specialist heart centre in Leicester are urging people to help with a campaign to keep it open.

The children’s cardiac surgery unit at Glenfield Hospital is earmarked for closure following a review of services countrywide. An e-petition has been set up in the hope of getting that decision reversed.

Emma Pearson, of Wolfit Avenue, Balderton, wants people to sign the petition and help save the hospital.

Her three-year-old daughter, Keira Dixon, was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which means she has only half a heart.

She had life-saving surgery at the hospital when she was just five days old and has continued to have treatment there.

Emma said: “We have been to hospitals in Birmingham and London and it is just not the same.

“Keira has been treated by the same nurses for the past two years and has grown to trust them.”

Mrs Pamela Durney, of London Road, Balderton, is urging people to sign the epetition.

Her son, Charlie, had heart care treatment at the hospital and continues to see his consultant there every six months.

“She is the same consultant who scanned him three months before he was born and has overseen every detail of his treatment,” said Mrs Durney.

The head of the East Midlands Congenital Heart Centre Mr Giles Peek said that nothing would happen in the short term.

“The transition process is not clear yet and until it is we are literally operating on the principle that this is business as usual,” he said.

The e-petition can be signed at http//epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/35788