Brighton family reaches target to get daughter crucial leg surgery in Israel

The family of a little girl who needs a specialist operation in Israel has said that well-wishers and a grant from a Cambridge-based charity have helped raise enough money for her to go.

Kyra Warrell, 6, needs the surgery to help save her leg, which would otherwise be amputated as it has been deformed by a rare genetic condition since birth. It has left one leg much shorter than the other.

Her family, who are not Jewish, had sought help raising £58,000 for the trip, operation and after-care physio, having already re-mortgaged their house to pay for the more expensive second operation that will be needed.

By Thursday, the campaign had raised £38,000, and the family had booked tickets to Tel Aviv on Tuesday 30 January, after a grant from charity Please Take Me There, which helps fund children’s travel to access healthcare.

Kyra’s Proximal Focal Femoral Deficiency (PFFD) affects only one in 50,000 children and has left her with a deformed hip, a shortened thigh and an unstable knee and ankle. Her father said: “As her left leg is so much shorter, she needs to wear a bulky and heavy prosthetic to help her walk, which causes her a lot of pain.”

Dr Dror Paley, an orthopaedic surgeon who specialises in leg-lengthening, works in both Florida and Israel, and has said he can help when he is next in Israel next month. Surgery could help avoid complications with Kyra’s hip and spine, and ultimately save her leg from being amputated.

She will need a series of operations over the next ten years, and the first step is to correct her hip and ankle. Costs include surgery, hospital stays, X-rays and MRI scans and a special brace.

In a tweet, her family wrote: “Flights booked. We will be flying to Tel Aviv for Kyra’s operation on Tuesday 30 January. Thanks to @takemethereuk for their travel grant to make this possible. This is all getting very real! Hopeful, yet scary.”