OFF-DUTY NURSE SAVES BABY
HERO RESUSCITATES GIRL IN STREET
AN off-duty hero nurse saved the life of a child who stopped breathing.
One-year-old Aliza Foster had passed out in the back of her mother’s car on a trip to pick up her older sister from nursery.
Mum Zoe Foster, 28, stopped in a panic on Cawdor Street in Eccles and pulled her daughter’s ‘floppy’ body from the car before screaming for help.
Zoe said cars drove past and ‘there were also people having a good nosey out of their windows but didn’t bother to help or get me help.’
But then nurse Tom Monaghan, 30, rode to the rescue as he drove home to Worsley, Salford.
“I saw what I thought was a lady with a baby in her arms on the side of the road,” Tom said. “I initially drove past but something didn’t look right.
“She looked either angry or upset and it was just my intuition to go back.”
After making a u-turn, he parked on the opposite side of the road and asked Zoe if she was okay.
“As soon as I pulled the window down she just shouted ‘no! my baby’ and that’s all that she could get out,” Tom said. “When I got close to Zoe she just passed me this child because she didn’t know what to do.
“Aliza looked lifeless and she was a bluey, grey colour – a colour that your body turns when you’ve been starved of oxygen for a while.”
He took Aliza from Zoe’s arms, and with the help of another man checked for any blockages in Aliza’s airways before performing CPR.
After resuscitating Aliza, Tom looked after her until an ambulance arrived.
Aliza was sent to Salford Royal Hospital but she is now recovering at home with her family.
Aliza was diagnosed with tonsillitis at hospital and Zoe said doctors believe the high temperature caused by the illness, along with mucus blocked in her airways, may have caused Aliza to lose her breath. Zoe says she thanked Tom at the scene, but not properly.
In the Facebook post appealing for him to come forward, Zoe wrote: “I can’t put into words how grateful we are that you were in that place at that time.
“I dread to think what could have happened had you not been there.”
Tom, a nurse at Wythenshawe Hospital, saw the post and has been in touch with the family.