Leah’s family are still waiting

A family’s wait to be flown over to the US so that their three-year-old girl can receive urgent cancer treatment is taking longer than expected. “Once we had the funds and the Government’s backing, I thought we’d fly over and get it done,” said Leah Xuereb’s mother Zhana yesterday. “But Leah is not the only girl in the world that needs to be treated, and the operation needs a team of some 30 people.” Leah’s €245,000 life-saving treatment, sponsored by the Maltese Government, is due to be administered at the Anderson Cancer Centre in Texas. No other hospital in the world can provide the combination of localised chemotherapy and surgery that the little girl needs. The little girl is currently at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, where she has been treated for the past 15 months for her yolk-sac tumour. If no date for the operation is set by the end of the week, Leah will be administered a light dose of chemo to keep her stabilised. “In the meantime we hope against hope that everything will be OK in a few weeks’ time,” her emotional mother said over the phone.