The parents of one of Britain’s youngest heart transplant survivors spoke yesterday of their gratitude to a German family who donated their dead baby’s heart.

Andrew McAskie, now 11 months old, had a heart attack at birth and was close to death when a family whose one-year-old baby had died made their offer. The heart was flown from Germany to the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle upon Tyne and, five weeks after he was born, Andrew underwent a transplant.

His mother, Sarah McAskie, a dentist, said: “When I look at him and think there is someone else’s heart in there keeping him going, it is mind-blowing. We think about the donor family on a daily basis and pray for them to have some comfort.

“Two babies were going to die, but because of their overwhelming generosity and kindness, Andrew is alive. Being able to think of someone else at a time like that was amazing. We feel very blessed.”

The Freeman Hospital performed Britain’s first successful baby heart transplant more than 20 years ago on Kaylee Davidson, who was 5 months old. She is now a healthy young woman. Since then nine babies younger than Andrew have had heart transplants in Britain, including one in 1989 who was 5 days old. Of those still alive, Andrew is the second-youngest.

Andrew will be on drugs for the rest of his life to stop his body rejecting the donor heart, and it is likely that he will need another transplant in 12 years. In the meantime his parents are enjoying every day at home with their “lovely, bubbly” baby after a harrowing first year.

Andrew was delivered by emergency Caesarean section on December 30 last year. By the end of his first day his skin was discoloured and his heart was not pumping properly.

Tests revealed that he had suffered a heart attack, an occurrence so rare among babies that staff at the Freeman Hospital had seen only one other case.

In the next few weeks Andrew’s heart stopped twice, he had kidney failure, he contracted an infection and he suffered a stroke. He was being kept alive on a heart machine and his parents were warned that without a transplant he would die.

Mrs McAskie said: “We were devastated as we had been hoping his heart might recover. It is rare for a heart so small to become available and we agonised that this was Andrew’s only chance.”

Two weeks later the heart of the German child did become available. Doctors had only four hours before it would have become unusable and it was rushed to Newcastle where Andrew was taken into surgery immediately.

Mrs McAskie said: “When they told us they had taken out Andrew’s heart we were petrified as we knew there was no going back. We were elated that it was a success and we could eventually bring him home.”

— Parents of sick or premature babies pay an extra £189 a week while their child is in hospital, according to research published today (David Rose writes).

The average expenditure for parents is £1,885 during the time their baby is being cared for, a survey for the premature-baby charity Bliss found. In some cases, parents spend more than £15,000 on top of the normal cost of having a baby.

Bliss said that the poll, of 169 families, showed that the financial strain could be crippling. Extra costs after the baby left hospital meant that the effects could be felt for many years. Travel to and from hospital accounted for an average of £62 a week while food away from home cost £24 a week.

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