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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?

 

Though many cases can be dealt with through regular monitoring, a significant number of children will require life-saving open-heart surgery, often in the first weeks of life. Without this surgery, less than one in ten children with serious heart conditions will survive.

Birmingham Children’s Hospital has one of the busiest Children’s Heart Centres in the UK. Their internationally renowned Cardiac Unit sees over 10,000 children a year, with approximately 80% of surgeries being open-heart procedures, and around 60% performed on children under 12 months old.

On 5th June 2006, my daughter, Kaitlyn Annie Jones, was born with a serious congenital heart defect known as hypoplastic left heart syndrome. There is no "cure" for this condition; the only treatment is a programme of high-risk palliative open-heart surgery.

Kaitlyn had the first of four open-heart surgeries when she was 3 days old; the last was the day before she died on 2nd August 2008. She was only just 2 years old. Throughout, Kaitlyn was treated by the excellent team at Birmingham Children's Hospital, without whose skills and dedication we would not have had so much time with our beautiful, special daughter.

To read Kaitlyn's story go to http://kay-kaitlyns.blogspot.com/

Over the last five years, the demand for cardiac services at Birmingham Children's Hospital has increased dramatically.

Keeping up with the growing demand though is proving very difficult. This is why the hospital needs to replace its ageing facility with a new state-of-the-art one – and add a second cardiac theatre. This will be a new ‘hybrid’ cardiac theatre, the first of its kind at a UK children’s hospital. Here the hospital will be able to perform surgical procedures and keyhole techniques simultaneously, offering exciting new horizons for the conditions they treat. It will also reduce the number of operations that children may need – and their lengths of stay in hospital.

To achieve this aim, the hospital needs to raise £2million. I am running the marathon to raise £1,500 towards this fundraising target so that other children like Kaitlyn have a chance of life and hopefully fewer families will experience the huge loss we have suffered.

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now. Every penny DOES make a difference. I will suffer running 26.2 miles but it will be nothing compared to the pain and suffering children like Kaitlyn experience. Help me help them and their families.