Parents praise 'amazing' child transport service

Sara Pervaiz and Mudasar Ahmed have thanked Embrace for helping them when their son Ibrahim was born three months early

Parents have thanked a child patient transport service for helping their baby who needed immediate specialist treatment after being born early.

Sara Pervaiz and Mudasar Ahmed, from Rotherham, used Embrace when their son Ibrahim was born 12 weeks early on 17 April by emergency Caesarean and weighed less than two pounds.

Embrace works with Yorkshire Ambulance Service and the Children's Air Ambulance to transfer critically ill youngsters in need of specialist care.

Ms Pervaiz told the BBC the Embrace service was "100 times better than I ever thought it would be", and her son was now receiving treatment in Barnsley.

Embrace was founded 15 years ago, and staff make around 2,500 trips a year around Yorkshire and the Humber - or further afield if there are no beds available in the local area.

The service transfers critically ill children and infants from local hospitals to more specialised centres, and back again.

Most are transferred by ambulance, but the Children's Air Ambulance recently hit a milestone of making 500 flights for Embrace.

Jo Whiston, lead nurse at Embrace, said the service was important for ensuring young people and babies received the best treatment

Jo Whiston, lead nurse at Embrace, has been with the service since it began.

She said: "It's an amazing team to be working with.

"It's the experience and the skills of working with limited resources in the back of the ambulances, you've only got what you've got in your bag or the cupboard.

"We try and stabilise the patients as much as possible in the local hospital, so that we're just doing the transfer of the child in the back of the ambulance.

"We're trying to prepare for anything that may happen, we're trying to make sure that we've got all the equipment that we might need, that the parents are aware of what's happening and where they're going to."

'No words to thank them'

Ms Pervaiz had pre-eclampsia but was staying with her family in Surrey at the time of Ibrahim's birth, so needed the transport service to bring the family back up to South Yorkshire.

She said Ibrahim was "doing really, really well to get to this stage and going through everything he went through".

She said: "I think it is a testament to how strong he is, but also thanks to all the healthcare he has received.

"I think the way he was looked after, I don't think there are any words you can say to say thank you."

His father Mudasar Ahmed said he also could not "thank them enough for the level of support they provided, they do an amazing job".

Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North or tell us a story you think we should be covering here.