National Appeal
Children’s Air Ambulance TV Appeal - Help Save Lives Like Oscar's
A toddler from Cornwall is the focus of a new TV appeal for the Children’s Air Ambulance.
Please, give what you can to help save young lives
Oscar was just three-days-old when he was flown from the Royal Cornwall Hospital to Bristol Children’s Hospital – 168 miles away – so he could receive the specialist treatment he desperately needed.
Within hours of being born by C-section, baby Oscar started making grunting noises when he was breathing and his oxygen saturation levels plummeted. After being transferred to the neonatal unit he was given antibiotics and oxygen, but he didn’t improve.
His doctors, began to suspect that he might have something wrong with his heart.
In collaboration with a specialist pediatric cardiac team at Bristol Children’s Hospital, it was discovered that Oscar had a rare congenital malformation and the team in Bristol wanted Oscar there within 48-hours.
That is when the Children’s Air Ambulance was mobilised.
The Children’s Air Ambulance is a national inter-hospital transfer service that flies critically ill babies and children to receive the lifesaving treatment they need.
The helicopter took off from its base in Oxford and flew to Bristol to pick up a specialist retrieval team to fly them to Royal Cornwall Hospital.
On arrival in Cornwall, the team prepared Oscar for the flight back to Bristol Children’s Hospital and accompanied him in the helicopter – which took just 54 minutes to complete the transfer. The same journey by road would have taken nearly three hours.
The Children’s Air Ambulance work with 10 NHS paediatric and neonatal retrieval teams across the UK, enabling them to bring their specialist equipment on board to safely transfer their patients from one hospital to another.
Your donations ensure the Children’s Air Ambulance can help children like Oscar, so please donate today.
