Mum's desperate bid to raise £1.5m for baby's life-saving surgery as 'NHS doesn't have expertise needed'

Ollie Williams was unexpectedly diagnosed with a rare and complex heart condition at just a few weeks old.

His mother, Jasmin Roberts, 24, from Wrexham, was told hospitals in the UK do not have the expertise needed to perform the life-saving surgery he needs, as his pulmonary arteries are too small.

Instead, they were only able to offer palliative care.

At 10 months old doctors told the family Ollie "would be lucky to live until he was two", but they have since retracted the prognosis telling them to take it month by month.

While the NHS doesn't have the expertise to carry out the surgery, a doctor at Stanford Children's Hospital in California who pioneered the surgery will be able to carry out the procedure - but the family need to raise £1.5million.

Ms Roberts is selling her home to help reach the target amount, as well as hosting fundraising events in the community and by sharing their story online.

Ms Roberts is now in a race against time to raise the money and get Ollie to the US for the procedure.

She said: "If we were in America, we'd just be treated and he would be fine. The surgery does exist on the NHS - they just don't seem to have the expertise to do it on Ollie."

Ms Roberts told LBC of the "horrific" and "traumatic" moment Ollie was diagnosed with the condition at just a few weeks old.

She said: "It's probably the worst torture I've ever been through, with no idea what was going on.

"We thought we had a perfectly healthy baby. We'd been seen by midwives every single day up until that point."

Ollie had passed all the newborn checks, but at two weeks the midwife referred him to the hospital for a prolonged jaundice screening, where it was found his saturations were only 85%.

He was rushed to hospital for further tests, and a week later he got the full diagnosis. Tests had discovered a hole in his heart and defects in his arteries.

Ollie's condition is called pulmonary atresia with ventricular septal defect and major aortopulmonary collateral arteries (PA-VSD MAPCAs).

At first Ms Roberts was told Ollie would live a normal life, but might get more breathless than other children.

Ms Roberts said she was told: "He won’t be an Olympian".

However, when Ollie was 10 months old they were "blindsided" by a terrifying prognosis that he would be lucky to live until two, and they should look at palliative care.

“This was so far from anything we had been told,” she said.

After desperately searching for further advice and reaching out to other hospitals, Stanford said they would be able to treat him.

The surgery in the US is expected to give Ollie a "full repair", allowing him to live a full life.

Ms Roberts said Ollie is a happy baby who laughs and giggles, adding: "He is just like a normal baby that's unfortunately just going through hell."

She said: "Ollie isn't on tubes or wires or anything like that. If you met him, you wouldn't think that he had the prognosis that he's got."

Ms Roberts told LBC the local community has rallied around the family and been "absolutely amazing".

She said: "The wider community support has been really, really good. We've had donations to raffles. We've got posters that we've been putting everywhere [and] on TikTok I've had people messaging me saying that they're going to be putting the posters up in their local towns."

You can find the GoFundMe here.