My Rosa is alive thanks to local heroes..don't take other sick babies' survival chances away

MSP dad demands neonatal services are not centralised

- VIVIENNE AITKEN

LITTLE Rosa Griffin is alive today because of the care given her by an award winning neonatal intensive care unit.

But the unit at the University of Wishaw Hospital, the top neonatal unit in the UK, is earmarked for downgrading.

Her dad, Labour MSP Mark Griffin, has now demanded these local units are retained recounting how his daughter survived thanks to his "local heroes".

Rosa was born on April 1, 2017, at 27 weeks, weighing just 535 grammes.

The intensive care she received was the only reason she survived insists Mark. He said: "She came home from the hospital almost five months later with the vast majority of those five months spent in the neonatal intensive care unit.

"My daughter's birth was an emergency. My wife's labour was induced as she developed an infection which, left untreated, would have killed them both.

"We were told that because of my daughter's size and gestation she would be very likely to be stillborn or die shortly after birth, but that the neonatal team were on standby to do what they could.

"We were left hoping and praying for a miracle but miracles don't happen, miraculous people happen.

"After birth the miraculous staff at Wishaw worked to keep our daughter alive, to get her into the intensive care unit for the start of a five-month rollercoaster journey of recovery."