BOLTON families are getting behind a campaign to build a dedicated helipad for the Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Charity.

The CMFT has launched its new £3.9 million Helipad Appeal for the creation of a brand-new 24-hour access primary helicopter landing site.

Seventeen-year-old Danielle Rigby, from Bromley Cross, was a patient of Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital last year after she was hit by a car on Chapeltown Road last April.

Suffering a near-fatal arterial bleed on the brain, she was airlifted to Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital via parkland one mile away from the site.

An onsite helipad would have meant she arrived at the hospital much sooner, and wouldn’t have had experienced a risky and uncomfortable secondary transfer.

Her mother, Sarah Rigby, said: “When our daughter Danielle was struck by a car she received massive head injuries, suffering a major bleed on the brain and losing a lot of oxygen very quickly. In short, a helipad within the hospital-site would have got her there quicker and given her a greater chance of survival. Despite landing in the park, we were lucky and Danielle did survive.

"Although it’s too early to tell for sure, we are hopeful she will make a full recovery, but we are so very aware how different our story could have been. The less time it takes to transfer a child, the more chance there is of saving them.”

Also supporting the Helipad Appeal is the family of nine-month-old Jeremiah Oderinde, also from Farnworth.

Last Christmas, Jeremiah was born at Saint Mary’s, but a few hours after his birth his lungs began to fail and he was failing to respond to the hospital’s highest frequency ventilator.

The only way to save him was by flying him out to one of four specialist centres in the UK to receive life-saving cardiac and respiratory support treatment, carried out via road ambulance and then a plane at Manchester Airport.

He is now a happy and healthy baby but the new-born’s transfer would have been much quicker, and his chance of survival increased, if there was a landing pad onsite at Central Manchester.

The helipad will be the first of its kind in central Manchester, located on the roof of the new multi-storey car park on Grafton Street and connected to hospitals by a high-level link bridge and roof top corridor.

Over the next year, the Helipad Appeal will take the lead focus of the charity’s fundraising, as it looks to rally support.

Chairman of Central Manchester Foundation Trust’s Charitable Fundraising Board, Maurice Watkins CBE, added: “Every single person who decides to support this appeal will be playing a vital role in securing faster and more effective transfers for our major trauma patients of the future.

"Together your support will help to reduce dramatically patient transfer times by up to two thirds and in turn will help to save lives and improve patient recovery.”