Show the child some compassion

It is not often that real anger and bemusement stirs in me when reading a press story, but this one did it.

I ask one simple question.

How on earth can it be that a 10-year-old child with such medical needs has to raise £50,000 to get the treatment he needs? And that treatment being not abroad but in Leeds.

I confess that I am not privy to the details, I only respond to the story.

But, on the face of it, it seems absurd as well as cruel.

How can it be that an ordinary British family cannot receive the care their child needs free on the NHS?

There has been much talk in the news lately about so-called health tourism.

Foreigners come here for treatment they are not strictly entitled to but get it anyway and, in many cases, avoid paying the costs.

Yet this family of taxpayers has such a financial burden placed upon it.

It seems to me to be outrageous!

We are often subjected to politicians’ diatribes about millions and billions of pounds spent on this or other “worthy” cause.

Our own esteemed MP, Ian Wright, often obfuscates issues in such a manner in his weekly column.

In this context the money needed for this child’s treatment is akin to finding small change down the back of a sofa. My message to the pompous lovers of political grandstanding is pay for this boy’s treatment now and show some modicum of compassion.

Tim Moss,

Seaton Carew.