A womb transplant charity in the UK has been praised by former Conservative MP Anna Firth after delivering Britain's first baby born to a recipient of their transplant - hailed as an "absolute first" for British science.Baby Amy Isabel has made history after her mother Grace Davidson, 36, received a womb transplant donated by her older sister Amy Purdie in 2023.FULL STORY HERE.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00the first baby to be born after a womb transplant in this country.
00:03Yeah, this is the most amazing, heartwarming story, isn't it?
00:07I mean, it's an absolute first for science in the UK.
00:11Of course, it's not actually the first in the world.
00:14Actually, there have been 65 children born through womb transplants.
00:19But this is going to be...
00:22Not only is this wonderful for the family concerned,
00:25and, you know, what a sister, what an elder sister to donate her womb.
00:29But there's 15,000 women in the UK who suffer
00:33from this Meyer-Rokitansky-Kusterhauser syndrome,
00:36where they might have healthy ovaries,
00:38but unfortunately, the womb doesn't work.
00:40Real ray of hope for them.
00:43The real hero here, I think, as well as the sister,
00:46is Professor Richard Smith from the Imperial NHS Trust.
00:49He spent 26 years developing this,
00:52started a charity, Womb Transplant UK.
00:55So this was all paid for through his charity.
00:58Doctors gave up their time for free.
01:0117 hours of surgery, not for the faint-hearted, but lovely result.
01:05And the baby is named after the sister, Amy, who donated her womb.
01:10And her middle name is Isabel, who's after the...
01:12That's after the surgeon who essentially transplanted that womb.
01:17And to do that, you had to connect all of the tiny little blood vessels
01:21with minuscule stitches. I mean, it's incredible, isn't it?
01:23It really is. It is incredible.
01:26But, Anna, I put it to you, what would you say to people who would say,
01:31what is the point of this?
01:32Because you're not going to be able to provide this on the NHS.
01:36We can't afford to.
01:37Well, as I said, that was one of my first thoughts, I have to say,
01:40when I was looking through this.
01:43And the fact that this professor has spent 26 years
01:48and actually started a charity,
01:50there are going to be a few more of these coming,
01:53but they're not going to be funded by the NHS.
01:56They are going to be funded by charity,
01:58which I think is, at this stage in the game, a very good thing.
02:02But it's only if we actually stretch the boundaries.
02:05You never know where these incredible surgical advances are going to end.
02:09I mean, look, think about heart transplants.
02:11We can all remember when we were young,
02:13learning about the very first heart transplant
02:15and how many were unsuccessful.
02:17And now it's not routine,
02:20but now that is something which happens world over.
02:23I mean, that's absolutely right.
02:24I mean, medical advances bring within our reach
02:27things that we thought were never in our grasp.
02:29And this is the start.
02:31It's understandable that these procedures,
02:34extraordinary procedures, which bring such joy to people,
02:37will be funded by charity.
02:38But you'd hope over time that these are the sorts of things
02:41that the NHS would look at seriously.
02:43And that's where we want to get to, really,
02:45because if you think, as you say, if you think back in history,
02:47there's been all kinds of advances that no one ever thought possible,
02:51which now become routine and every day.
02:53And that is a good thing.
02:54And it is a reminder that we can,
02:55with all the doom and gloom in the world,
02:58we can still do amazing things.
03:00Yeah. And for women as well that have had cancer and endometriosis
03:03and had to have their womb removed as well,
03:06a ray of hope for them as well.
03:08So it's a great story this morning.