Desperate search to find donor heart for dying baby

Now the toddler is being kept alive by an artificial heart and needs a transplant as soon as possible or she will die.

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18-month-old Zoe Chambers, pictured with mum Julie, has survived six heart attacks

She has been put at the top of the European heart transplant list. But her age and size make the task of finding a suitable donor organ extremely difficult.

Her parents, Julie and Rob Chambers, know their daughter's only hope is for another child to die and bring heartbreak to another family.

They have been told that hearts from donors up to five years old can be considered suitable for transplant surgery and they must also be a good enough tissue match.

As she waited at Zoe's bedside in Newcastle upon Tyne's Freeman Hospital, Mrs Chambers, 33, spoke of her daughter's extraordinary fight for life.

"She is extremely feisty and has a strong spirit and will to live," she said. "I know that someone has to lose a child so that Zoe can be saved but I have blinkers on and try not to think about it like that.

"I just think of the generosity and bravery of the parents."

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Julie wasn't in the room when Zoe had her first heart attack - 'I've never left her side since'

Mrs Chambers, a former care home worker, and her husband Rob, a mechanical engineer, live in Hull with their four-year-old son Dylan.

Since Zoe's birth their lives have revolved almost entirely around hospitals.

Two days after Zoe was born a scan showed that one of her heart valves was too narrow and struggling to allow blood to pass through. Her first cardiac arrest happened at St James's Hospital in Leeds when Zoe was four weeks old.

It occurred during a surgical procedure to fit a balloon catheter - to increase blood flow to her heart.

"Her heart stopped," said Mrs Chambers. "I wasn't in the room at the time, but since then I have never left her side."

Early in her life Zoe's heart swelled and she suffered liver and kidney failure but she pulled through. The second-heart attack happened when she was 13 months old and the last four have been in the last three months at the Freeman Hospital.

Mrs Chambers said: "The doctors were straight on to her and she was saved every time.

"I don't know how I get through each day. I take it day by day and hour by hour. If she has a good day I have a good day but if she has a bad day then I have a bad day."

The parents have put their lives on hold as they wait for news about a donor. Last week a heart became available but doctors decided it was too large for Zoe.

The £100,000 Berlin heart pump has only recently been used to keep children alive while awaiting a transplant.

Yamuna Thiru, a paediatric intensive care consultant at the Freeman Hospital, said without a transplant they would be "pushing the boundaries" for Zoe to survive another three months.

Zoe is being kept alive by an artificial heart