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You give baby Oscar chance to drink
READERS of The Star have raised £25,000 to send baby Oscar Calvert to an Austrian clinic - where he will learn to drink for the first time.
Little Oscar, who was born by emergency Caesarean section in January, stopped breathing just hours after his birth and spent the following six weeks in Rotherham Hospital and at the Jessop Wing in Sheffield.
Mum Chantil, aged 35, and dad Andrew, 37, from Rotherham, want to take their nine-month-old son to a private clinic in Austria which specialises in weaning children off feeding tubes and helps them to eat and drink naturally.
The service is not available on the NHS so the couple launched a 25,000 appeal in The Star in the summer to achieve their dream.
Oscar's story touched readers' hearts and now thanks to supporters the family will be able to travel out to the clinic before the end of the year.
"We want to thank everyone who's supported us and raised the money as it means we can go to the clinic," said Andrew.
"The clinic has a 95 per cent success rate and we have spoken to another family who've been there and they say it was the best thing they've done for their son."
The clinic will teach Oscar to swallow liquid, transforming the quality of his life. He can currently eat small quantities of food but, for unknown reasons, cannot drink. Currently feeding takes several hours because after Oscar has had a meal he has to wait an hour before being tube-fed milk - to ensure he is not having too much food and liquid at once.
When he was born the little lad was thought to be blind and deaf but he is starting to show awareness of his surroundings.
Supporters raised the money by holding raffles, auctions, golf days and signing up for sponsored events.
Among the more unusual supporters have been a group of friends from Didcot, Oxfordshire, who contacted Andrew after reading about Oscar's plight in The Star while visiting Sheffield.
The Thong Rangers, who help children who cannot get treatment on the NHS, then walked the streets of Rotherham and Sheffield wearing just thongs and carrying collecting buckets to raise over 900.
- Log on to www.help4oscar.com to read more about the appeal.
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Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 26 May 2012
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Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
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