KISS OF LIFE FOR PARENTS OF BUBBLE CHILDREN
22/02/2008

A GoodFund donation to North East kids charity the Bubble Foundation will provide much needed support for parents of children with Severe Combined Immune Deficiency Syndrome or SCID.

The £9,416.49 grant from the charity of the People’s Postcode Lottery will help refurbish the parent accommodation they stay in whilst their child is undergoing treatment.  This small step can help parents settle quickly at a time when their child might be away from home for what can be from 6 months up to two years.

Based at Newcastle General Hospital, the Children’s Bone Marrow Transplant Unit which is supported by the Bubble Foundation provides world-class bone marrow transplants to children who have been born without an immune system and cannot fight the simplest of infections.  These babies cannot be kissed by their mother or held by their father outside of the special 8 feet sterile ‘bubble’ which provides in a constant clean air flow, preventing threat from further infection.

Denise Robertson MBE, President of the Bubble Foundation, said:

“We started the Bubble Foundation in 1991 with very little support and a disappointing rate of success for the families who came in with very sick children.  In the last 5 years, we have had 115 transplants with an 88% success rate, which is just phenomenal and all thanks to the hard work of the doctors, nurses and researchers here at Ward 23.”

The Unit receive patients from all over the UK and Ireland as this is only one of two units in the country that can provide this specialist level of care for this very debilitating and often fatal syndrome.

There are currently 20 patients undergoing treatment at the Bubble unit, including Jacek and Mateusz Przybyla. The 4 month-old twin boys who were born with SCID travelled with their parents from Ireland to receive a life-saving bone marrow transplant before Xmas.  After many weeks of complications and already losing one brother to the syndrome, both boys are now making good progress and the doctors hope to release them to the care of their parents at the end of March. 

However, the family won’t go back to Ireland straight away.  The hospital also runs 4 halfway houses a half mile away from the hospital where families can live whilst the children convalesce and have easy access to the unit’s social worker and nursing support should they need it.

Professor Andrew Cant spoke of his groundbreaking work at the unit. 

“ We are able to perform transplants on slightly older children too who have imperfect immune systems as well as those with systems which are overactive leading to rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.  This is far more complicated as the children have to face a series of chemotherapy sessions to get the body ready for transplant before the new bone marrow can be transfused.  This takes roughly two weeks to start working and often up to six months to mature.”

Bill Midgley, Trustee of GoodFund, said:

“For anyone who has ever had a sick child, you understand how heart wrenching it is to leave them for any length of time.  By providing this donation, we can ensure the parents have somewhere comfortable to sleep before returning to the hospital to be with their children. ”

The GoodFund donation will provide new beds, sofa beds, washing machines, tumble dryers and other essential kitchen equipments for the parents living at the hospital.