Of brave little Charlotte just as UK waits for wonder drug
FIVE year-old Pattie Dobbyne is determined not to let cystic fibrosis rule her life – or ruin her dream to be a Team GB gymnastics star.
The youngster was diagnosed as a baby before being treated in hospital for infections like pneumonia.
But she joined a gymnastics club near her home in Girton, Cambridgeshire, at two-and-a-half, initially just to boost her fitness and lung function.
Since then she has not been back to hospital – and her family are insistent the gymnastics is keeping her fit and well.
On top of daily training on high bars, vault, floor exercises and trampoline, Pattie also takes 22 tablets, has two hours of physio and four nebulisers.
Her mother Georgie Dobbyne, 35, saids: “Pattie is amazingly competitive, which is great as it means she wants to train herself.
“After her difficult early years we read that exercise was good for CF sufferers as it keeps their lungs clear so we tried mini-gym.
“Now it is all she wants to do all day and night and she is obsessed. She even practises cartwheels in our living room.
“We are positive that all the gym work is helping to keep her healthy and out of hospital.”
Pattie is now in the development squad for five-year-olds at
COURAGE OF GYMNAST, 5
the Cambridge Gymnastics Academy. Her dream is to be a British gymnast like Alice Kinsella, 17, who last year won a gold medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia.
Georgie said NHS England’s stalemate with Vertex made no financial sense because getting Orkambi for children like Pattie now would save the health service millions in the long-run.
The mother-of-two added: “Think of all the millions of pounds that could be saved on lung transplants and months of hospital stays for CF patients in their later years if they can get Orkambi when they are children.
“Health deterioration for children with cystic fibrosis isn’t just a possibility, it’s an absolute eventuality.
“Orkambi would ‘stop the clock’ of deterioration. So the healthier they are and the earlier they get it means they can maintain that hopefully for the rest of their lives. Surely that is common sense.
“Yet NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) and the NHS don’t seem to be taking that potential future cost-saving into account. They are simply focused on how much a deal will cost them now.”