£1m heart transplant hero's dad urges schools to teach about organ donation
A life saving transplant can cost the NHS more than £1m, leading to calls for better education about organ donation in schools.
Mini marvel Beatrix Adamson-Archbold spent almost 15 months in hospital as she waited for her heart transplant. Now thriving at four years old, she is a testament to the miracle of organ donation.
But her dad Terry Archbold told of the extraordinary costs to the NHS for her care prior to the op in June 2023 at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle. Beatrix spent 30 days in paediatric intensive care, at a cost of £2800 per day, a total bill of £84,000.
There were also 425 days in the high dependency unit at an average of £1800 per day, which comes to £765,000. The Berlin Heart device fitted to keep her alive prior to the op costs up to £120,000 in the UK.
The estimated bill for the transplant operation itself is £36,000 for staff and theatre time. And replacement Berlin Heart ventricles throughout Beatrix's stay in hospital cost in excess of £40,000, a bill of more than £1m.
Durham police officer Terry, 47, believes school lessons about organ donation for children of all ages would raise awareness, increase the number of donors and reduce the cost burden on the NHS.
He said: "You add up the cost of all the equipment, time on the high dependency unit, the time of the nurses and doctors and surgeons, and it comes to more than £1m.
"The bottom line is that, if we carry on on the trajectory that this country is on, then the waiting list for donations grows month by month.
"We will have situations where there is no capacity for adults and children. And more lives will be lost. And that terrifies me."
Terry, of Burnopfield, Co Durham, added: "I have been into schools and the kids are so receptive to the idea of donation.
"The questions and the insight, it was amazing to see their grasp and their compassion. School lessons work in Canada and Greece and they are starting to teach these lessons in Northern Ireland."
He gave the example of Kayleigh Llewellyn, 18, of Seaham, Co Durham, who is going to train a paramedic.
The Mirror campaigned to change the organ donor law in England and told how Kayleigh's life was saved by a heart donor in 2019.
Terry added: "Fast forward 30 years. Kaylee is a qualified paramedic. A single act of donation by her donor has saved not just her life, but the hundreds of lives saved by Kayleigh every day in her job.
"Every single patient, every person she saves can be traced back to the moment that her donor family decided to save her life. All thanks to one selfless act of organ donation. It is absolutely mind blowing."
Terry and Beatrix's mum Cheryl Adamson, 42, a council worker, have seen both sides of the transplant journey. In 2018, they lost their daughter Isabel (c) when she was stillborn and they donated her heart for medical research.
Terry has written to the Prime Minister calling on the Government to make organ donation a statutory part of the National Curriculum. He is being supported in his crusade by Sergio Petrucci, who won a Pride of Britain award for his work with the Red Sky Foundation, and Orgamites, the group which teaches about organ donation in schools.
The Government is considering an independent review on the national curriculum with Professor Becky Francis and her expert panel giving their recommendations.
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Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
Dentist being fined £150K by NHS for keeping patients' teeth too healthy
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Rob is currently being fined £150,000 by the NHS in a funding 'claw back' effectively for keeping his patients too healthy with regular check-ups and preventative work. It is an example of the widely discredited NHS dental payment contract which is causing dentists to quit the health service in their droves to see only private patients. Every Thursday the practice opens its NHS books to local kids who have not seen a dentist in years - and in some cases have never seen one. Rob, who himself has three children aged ten, eight and four, said: 'That's one of the reasons I do it because I have young children but it's quite emotional. We were seeing four and five year olds who had so much decay we just had to send them to hospital to get extractions. There's such a backlog of sending these kids to have general anaesthetic to get the teeth out so we're trying to maintain them until they get their teeth extracted. 'One of the dentists saw a seventeen year old who hadn't seen a dentist in ten years and needed 28 fillings. You've got really emotional parents that are feeling really guilty that they have got themselves into this position. One of our nurses said she couldn't work on that list because it was too upsetting because she has kids of a similar age. It's a really sad situation.' Fairfield House Dental Surgery has been running for over 100 years. Rob became a partner in 2012 before becoming owner when another partner retired in 2017. The practice does free supervised tooth brushing at local primary schools as well as sending practitioners to breast feeding and toddler groups to educate parents. Rob, 43, said: 'We're blessed with a group of patients who've been with us for a long time, some have been coming here for more than 50 years. So that's why I'm still with the NHS because it feels like the right thing to do, to keep going for them. It's a kind of cradle to grave service which is what the NHS was supposed to be. But that's the only reason we're doing it - out of good will.' Why is top dentist being 'fined' £150,000 for keeping his patients' teeth too healthy? Rob Mew owns a rare example of a thriving NHS dental practice in the middle of a dental desert. Fairfield House Dental Surgery employs ten dentists and does free outreach work in the local community to improve oral health. However when we visited the surgery was in the process of returning £150,000 to the NHS because it had not carried out enough Units of Dental Activity (UDA). It was having to pay £50,000 a month over three months. UDAs are the metric used by the NHS in its dentistry payment contract which has been deemed 'not fit for purpose' by Parliament's Health and Social Care Committee. The contract requires practices to agree to perform a set number of UDAs - and they are penalised if they come in below or above this. A check-up is worth one UDA while giving a patient a filling racks up three UDAs. Rob told the Mirror: 'We are being penalised for preventing patients requiring more UDAs. We have £150,000 'claw back' this year but we have 19,000 NHS patients which is more than the practice has ever had. The clawback is for not doing enough UDAs but when patients are being looked after better they don't have as much need for dental work.' Fairfield surgery gives his patients a check up every 12 months whereas other practices call lower risk patients back for check ups every two years. Rob said: 'We are seeing them yearly and that's one UDA. We are preventing loss of tooth. A GP practice is paid for how many patients they have on their list. That's how they should be funding dentistry.' Rob says between five and ten people call the practice every day desperate to be seen by an NHS dentist. He has taken on as many as he can but has just started a waiting list. He said: 'We have got patients travelling to be seen here from as far away as north Wales, Manchester and Sheffield. "The NHS dental contract in England only funds enough for half the population to be treated so these patients have moved away but can't get a dentist. And the Exmouth population is exploding and we have a load of new housing but no more dentistry money to treat the people in those houses.' A key Mirror campaign demand is reform of the hated NHS payment contract which disincentivises dentists from treating the patients who need it most. Dentists get paid the same for delivering three or 20 fillings, often leaving the practice treating NHS patients at a loss. Last week the Government published its Ten Year Health Plan which pledged that "by 2035 the NHS dental system will be transformed" - but the British Dental Association insists contract reform must happen much sooner. Rob said: 'With these most vulnerable patients with high needs it's really tricky for the practice to to make that work [financially]. 'We had a family last Thursday with three kids and they had never been seen by a dentist. There was decay everywhere and they clearly need a lot of work and the parents are saying we haven't been able to be seen anywhere. And they're just tired because they've been calling around practices trying to get in and it kind of gets put on the back burner. 'We had a 14 year old girl come in a couple of weeks ago and she had four crowns put on her back teeth. And you're thinking, if we hadn't handled that soon she would have a couple of back teeth missing and then a lower denture.' Dental practices have high overheads with staff costs and materials. Fairfield House Dental Surgery is currently trying to find the funds for a new dentist chair which will cost £30,000. Rob has worked in the NHS in some form for 28 years, starting at the age of 15 in a hospital kitchen. He added: 'I've got a lot of good will towards the NHS so yeh I try my best to make it work.' But NHS dentistry cannot rely on good will alone. The British Dental Association warned the Public Accounts Committee earlier this year that the Treasury has become reliant on practices delivering care at a loss - fuelling an exodus of NHS dentists into lucrative private work. The professional body estimates a typical practice loses over £40 delivering a set of NHS dentures and £7 for every new patient exam. A Parliamentary report by the Health Select Committee has described the state of NHS dentistry as "unacceptable in the 21st century". The NHS contract effectively sets quotas on the maximum number of NHS patients a dentist can see as it caps the number of procedures they can perform each year. At the same time over a decade of real terms funding cuts under the Tories means the £3 billion NHS dental budget for England is only enough to treat around half of the population. Devon worst 'Dental Desert' Data from 700,000 participants in last year's GP Patient Survey showed it is hardest to get an NHS dentist appointment in South West England. Questions on dentistry focused on respondents who had attempted to get an NHS dental appointment in the last two years suggests Devon may be one of the country's worst dentistry deserts. Survey responses were grouped by regional Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) which include NHS bodies, local councils and voluntary organisations. The One Devon ICB is responsible for the health of the population in the county. Among people who were already in with an NHS dentist, Devon saw just 72% of people successfully get an appointment. In the wider South West region this was 74% while for England as a whole it was 84%. Dentists for All campaign Save NHS Dentistry petition Sign our petition to save NHS dentistry and make it fit for the 21st century Our 3 demands Everyone should have access to an NHS dentist More than 12 million people were unable to access NHS dental care last year – more than 1 in 4 adults in England. At the same time 90% of dental practices are no longer accepting new NHS adult patients. Data from the House of Commons Library showed 40% of children didn't have their recommended annual check-up last year. Restore funding for dental services and recruit more NHS dentists The UK spends the smallest proportion of its heath budget on dental care of any European nation. Government spending on dental services in England was cut by a quarter in real terms between 2010 and 2020. The number of NHS dentists is down by more than 500 to 24,151 since the pandemic. Change the contracts A Parliamentary report by the Health Select Committee has branded the current NHS dentists' contracts as 'not fit for purpose' and described the state of the service as "unacceptable in the 21st century". The system effectively sets quotas on the maximum number of NHS patients a dentist can see as it caps the number of procedures they can perform each year. Dentists also get paid the same for delivering three or 20 fillings, often leaving them out of pocket. The system should be changed so it enables dentists to treat on the basis of patient need. Have you had to resort to drastic measures because you couldn't access an NHS dentist? Are you a parent struggling to get an appointment for a child? Email or call 0800 282591 Of those who attempted to get an appointment at a practice they had not been seen at before, only 14% were successful in Devon. This compared to 19% in the South West region and 33% as the average for England. 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'We have already begun the rollout of 700,000 extra urgent dental appointments, a 'golden hello' scheme is underway to recruit dentists to areas with the most need and we are reforming the NHS dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists - including introducing tie-ins for those trained in the NHS."
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
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‘My disabled child will need PIP for life – I fear what will happen when I die'
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Through it all, I had no FOXP1 families to meet up with, have a coffee with – with whom to share our woes. But now, in Amsterdam, we were joining 75 families like ours from 15 countries across the world - including 5 from the UK - at the two day conference. In all, we met 49 children and adults with FOXP1 – ranging in age from 2 to 46. Meeting scientists and hearing about new research and treatments was awesome. But nothing beats meeting other people like Annabelle and other mums like me. To my astonishment, I even met another family from London who are only about 10 miles away from us. At last, I was making connections. People I could laugh and cry with. People who understood. And as we talked, I finally started getting answers to questions that haunted me. What will Annabelle's future look like? Will she continue to progress? Will she ever live independently? Will she ever have a job? Make friends? How do I cope with her challenging behaviour? What will happen when I die? 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Scotsman
3 hours ago
- Scotsman
How Labour's NHS reforms in England pose a real threat to the SNP
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Given the Labour government's performance in recent weeks, it was refreshing to hear some genuine vision in the Health Secretary's ten-year health plan for England and Wales. Don't get me wrong, I have questions about the deliverability. The lack of social care. The expense. But when Wes Streeting opened his speech by saying, 'there are moments in our national story when our choices define who we are', I knew we were about to hear something momentous. What I had not anticipated was that the 'Fit for the Future' Plan he was about to unveil for England would not only set out a new vision and direction for the NHS there, but throw down the gauntlet for the Scottish Government. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad On the anniversary of the announcement of a National Health Service by the Attlee Government, Streeting revealed what he claimed will be a reformed neighbourhood health service. That it was largely welcomed, sometimes cautiously, on all sides of the Commons speaks not just to the plan itself but to the widespread belief that major reform is needed if we are to safeguard one of our country's proudest achievements for the next generation. Getty Images Comparing waiting lists Of course, there were questions from the Tories on detail and from my own party, the Liberal Democrats, on how it will impact on social care specifically. We have long called for free personal care, based on the model introduced by the Scottish Liberal Democrats in government, better support for unpaid carers and help for those struggling with accommodation costs. But the general feeling was that this plan has the community-based approach and ambition which is required. And as Tory Shadow Health Secretary Ed Argar put it, we need it to stick. While that ambition might currently be contained within England by devolution legislation, there's surely no doubt it will invite comparison with Scotland as waiting times and other targets often do. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It's also likely that the pressure faced by the current service and staff in Scotland and the SNP's abject failure to produce the same sort of ambitious vision will be a major issue in the 2026 election. Learning from England Given that importance, it was disappointing the only contribution from that party in the debate in parliament was an self-congratulatory comment on our medicines agency. Surely those of us who have benefited from a health service and staff coping with unacceptable under resourcing and often crumbling facilities are entitled to expect better of our Holyrood ruling party. The SNP would now do well to spend time reading what Streeting has laid out. I have a sneaking suspicion that Labour in Scotland will want to promote something similar. They may well see it as the key to electoral success, as well as the key to securing the future of the NHS. In times of crisis especially, there is nothing wrong with looking across the Border to see what is possible elsewhere. We have often examined the work of European or Nordic countries for examples of how to tackle issues with housing, education and beyond. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad To refuse to look to our nearest neighbours for a health service cure would be churlish at best. And this time, it might just be terminal for the SNP.
