Child B tells of anger at NHS

I say never give up hope unless you are on the last little drop of life you have in you

REBECCA FOWLER

Jaymee Bowen, the 11-year-old known as Child B, has spoken for the first time of her fight against leukaemia, after being refused NHS treatment because of the severity of her illness.

Jaymee, who was finally named yesterday after the Court of Appeal lifted an order banning the media from revealing her identity, described how she never gave up hope, despite her family being forced to look for a private donor to fund her pounds 75,000 chemotherapy treatment. "I say never give up, unless you are just on the last drop of life you have in you," she says in an interview, to be broadcast tonight in a special edition of Panorama on BBC1.

The case prompted a national outcry in February when Cambridge and Huntingdon health authority refused to pay for further treatment.

Jaymee says in the interview: "I'd rather have gone through more suffering to live than not to go through anything and die. Of course, there are some children who wouldn't do that. But I'm not one of them."

She describes how she coped when her illness returned in January. "I just got called out of assembly and told you've got a bug in your blood," she said. "I'm thinking, 'oh no, here we go'."

Jaymee, who is currently in remission, has an angry message for the officials who refused her treatment: "Thank you for nothing. Now look at me - I'm fine. You could have paid for it. You had the chance and you blew it."

The court order banning the media from revealing her identity was lifted so her family could sell her story to raise money for further treatment.

The fight for life, page 3