Little Maverick Corin is continuing to wait for a bed and transplant to become available at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital so he can undergo a heart-saving transplant
The family of a baby with just days left to find a life-saving heart transplant has issued a desperate plea after being caught up in a political row before being allowed to fly to the UK for treatment.
Poorly tot Maverick Corin found himself at the centre of an NHS funding row before a U-turn allowed him to be flown from Turkey to be treated in a UK hospital. Maverick’s family said he was in a “stable but critical” condition after he survived a flight back to the UK where he is waiting for a life-saving heart transplant.
On Saturday afternoon he was placed under an ECMO life support machine that would keep him alive in the hope a heart transplant could be found in time. Maverick, known as Mav, is currently being treated at Bristol Children’s Hospital as he continues to wait for a bed and transplant to become available at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.
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Helston Methodist minister Rev Danny Reed, who is related to Adam and Mav, and acting as a family spokesperson, said: “It is awful. Mav is now on a machine that acts as a heart and is waiting for a bed in Great Ormond Street for a transplant. He only has a week left on this machine.
“He went on the ECMO on Saturday afternoon whilst I was there. He has had great care from the Bristol Children’s Hospital. He just needs an urgent heart transplant and we are all praying for him.”
Mav had been caught in a political wrangle before the NHS U-turned and allowed him to fly in to the UK to be treated at hospital. His family previously spoke out and said he would die in a Turkish hospital unless the NHS stopped ‘playing politics’ with his life and blocking life-saving treatment.
The tot became gravely ill in December and needed urgent surgery that is not available to him in Turkey. He holds a British passport issued for emergency travel through his dad and had planned to move back to the UK with his family. But despite raising £38k for an air ambulance flight, his loved ones accused hospital management in the UK of “passing the buck” over where he would be treated.
NHS bosses said they then carried out an urgent review and agreed to accept him as a patient following a number of political and personal interventions. His dad Adam Corin said Mav survived the flight and was now in hospital awaiting transplant.
He said in his latest update: “We had a good flight over. First hour he was pretty bad and then had to sedate him and he then slept for the rest. The risky part went well. Bristol Children’s Hospital has really blown me away, just everything is incredible and the doctors and nurses I cannot praise enough. Mav is still in a stable but critical condition.”
Mav is now on an ECMO machine, which involves the use of an artificial lung located outside the body that puts oxygen into the blood and continuously pumps this blood into and around the body. In babies with very poor cardiac function, ECMO can take over the work of the patient’s heart. This provides time for the heart to rest and recover, while maintaining a good blood supply to the brain and other organs in the body.
Speaking previously, Adam he had started investigating bringing Mav back to England for this major operation, as the only way he could save his son. However, British hospitals that can carry out the procedures were then caught up with “infighting over who should take Mav and who should pay the bill.” Adam said previously that Bristol couldn’t accept Mav without knowing if he was entitled to NHS care or not.
But after publicity surrounding the case, NHS managers said an ‘urgent review’ had been carried out and they had agreed to accept Maverick as a patient. Adam, who was living in Bristol, had moved to Istanbul on a temporary basis after meeting his partner Eda. Eda gave birth to Mav four months ago and Adam had planned to bring the family back to his native Cornwall to live permanently.
Helston Methodist minister Rev Danny Reed, who is related to Adam and Mav, has taken up the fight, contacting MP Andrew George, whose office he said “helped immensely” in speaking directly to the Secretary for Health and the Home Office to get Mav an emergency passport. Professor Tim Whittlestone, Chief Medical and Innovation Officer, Bristol NHS Group said previously: “Following an urgent review by a senior multi-disciplinary team, we have agreed to accept Maverick as a patient at UHBW.
“If he is able to travel safely, our teams will do everything they can to ensure he receives the best possible care. As at all times throughout this process, our thoughts are firmly with Maverick and his family. We understand the public interest in this case, but we must respect patient confidentiality and therefore cannot share any additional details or comment further.”
