"Birmingham Children’s Hospital is the foremost specialist Children’s Hospital for Birmingham and the Midlands, offering a wide range of paediatric services for children and young people throughout the Midlands and beyond."

Did you know that almost one in every hundred children is born with a heart problem?
Or that congenital heart defects are the most common of all life-threatening abnormalities?

My little sister Grace was born with a heart syndrome called Hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS). This causes the aorta and left ventricle of her heart to be too small to allow blood to flow.

Within days of being born, Grace was rushed to Birmingham Children's Hospital and underwent life saving open heart surgery. She has undergone many since operations, with many ups and downs (at one point, doctors only gave her 48 hours to live). 

But through all this, she has become a perfectly normal 7 year old girl who lives everyday with a magical smile on her face. The fact she is alive today is 100% down to the nurses, doctors and surgeons from the heart department at BCH.

Recently, she has just had her tonsills removed. This would normally be a regular procedure, but it has taken years for doctors to be happy to perform the operation, and because she is on constant aspirin medication, there is a massive risk of major bleeding.

I went down to the hospital to visit her, and I was absolutely disgusted to find that the heart department needs to raise £2million or face closure. Now for me, there shouldn't be a price on the lives that this department and hospital has saved and changed.

I am walking a walk called 'The Dales Highway' over a week in September with my Granddad and I have decided to do this for the heart department and to say thank you and show my appreciation to what they have done for my family.

Any donation, no matter how great or small is massively appreciated and will be a massive help.

Thankyou for reading

Matt

Birmingham Children's Hospital treats over 140,000 children a year afnd is one of the best hospitals in Europe. It specialises in Cardiac and neonatal surgery and has one of the most hi-tech heart departments in the world.