WA: RAAF poised to help WA girl get heart-lung transplant

AAP General News (Australia)
02-11-2007
WA: RAAF poised to help WA girl get heart-lung transplant

PERTH, Feb 11 AAP - The RAAF is on stand by to fly a mercy mission for a teenage West
Australian girl in need of a life saving heart-lung transplant.

Aimee Blakiston, 17, is in Royal Perth Hospital suffering primary pulmonary hypertension
and has just weeks to live unless she gets a transplant.

Donors are being sought Australia-wide but there's concern that if a heart and lungs
are found in the eastern states a commercial flight might not be able get the organs to
Perth fast enough.

A heart and lungs can only be out of a body for five or six hours before they begin to fail.

Aimee's desperate plight has prompted WA Health Minister Jim McGinty write and ask
Defence Minister Brendan Nelson to authorise the use of a military jet if required.

A spokesman for Dr Nelson confirmed today a military jet would be scrambled at short
notice if needed.

Mr McGinty said Aimee's doctors describe her as a "wonderful and typical" teenage girl.

"She averaged more than 80 per cent in her high school exams even though she was so
sick that her school attendance was less than 10 per cent," Mr McGinty said in his letter
to Dr Nelson.

"She comes from a supportive and caring family who have been devastated by her illness,
especially as multiple doctors misdiagnosed her condition over the past two years as chronic
fatigue syndrome."

The minister said that before her illness Aimee loved sport, playing basketball and
taking part in competitive show riding.

AAP lk/wjf/it/bwl

KEYWORD: BLAKISTON

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