A terminally ill 13-year-old girl who has rejected the chance of a heart transplant said yesterday that she was happy that her decision could save someone else’s life.

Hannah Jones has been warned that she may die at any time if she refuses a transplant. A hospital trust went to the High Court in an attempt to make her change her mind but dropped the action at the last minute.

Yesterday she stood by her decision to stay at home rather than risk the operation. “I know there’s a big waiting list for heart transplants and I’m happy to save someone else’s life,” she said. “I just decided that there were too many risks, and even if I took it there might be a bad outcome afterwards.

“I’ve been in hospital too much and I’ve associated hospital with bad memories, so that’s why I didn’t want the transplant. There is a chance that I may be OK, and there is a chance that I may not be as well as I could be, but I’m taking that chance.”

Hannah’s heart was fatally weakened by drugs given to her to treat leukaemia when she was 5. It has only 10 per cent of normal function and she quickly gets short of breath. Doctors warned Hannah that a transplant was her only hope of long-term survival but that the immuno-suppressant drugs that she would have to take to prevent her body rejecting the donor organ could lead to a recurrence of the leukaemia.

Rather than take the chance of dying in hospital during the treatment, she decided to stay at home with her parents, Kirsty and Andrew, and let nature take its course.

In an interview with Sky News she described how she had made her case to a child protection officer after Herefordshire Primary Care Trust tried to have her removed from her parents’ care on the ground that they were “preventing treatment”.

She said: “I said I have been in hospital too much, I have had too much trauma associated with hospital. I put my point across and said I really don’t want this and it is not my choice to have it. Not a month or a year has passed when I have not had medical treatment.”

Hannah, from Marden, near Hereford, manages to attend school three days a week — on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

She said: “I get tired really easily but I’m just a normal teenager. I talk to my friends on MSN and I love reading Enid Blyton.

“I’m well at the moment, doing things that I would normally do. I do struggle doing day-to-day things but I manage as best as I can.”

Her mother, a former intensive care nurse, has backed her daughter’s decision. She said: “It’s not a decision to be taken lightly, but one that Hannah felt quite strongly about and we support her in that.

“She’s absolutely fabulous. She’s so grown up and she is so good, and really brave. We’re really proud of her.”

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