A PENRITH family are encouraging people to support the Great North Air Ambulance, after their daughter was saved by the charity when she was four months old.

Grace Gardiner from Penrith was only four months old when she started vomiting severely at her home in Penrith.

She was taken to the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle by her mother, Helen Gardiner.

It was revealed Grace had a blockage in her bowels and needed emergency surgery, but the hospital she was at didn’t have the facilities to carry this out.

The GNAAS critical care team offered to airlift her to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle.

This would not have been possible without the generosity of those who choose to leave a gift in their Will.

Mrs Gardiner said: “We didn’t realise gifts in Wills represent a third of the running costs of the entire charity.

"Thanks to those who have left a gift to GNAAS, they’ve given Grace the gift of life.

“If it hadn’t been for the air ambulance, she just wouldn’t be here because nobody else could take her.

"She would never have survived the journey without them.

"We owe everything to the Great North Air Ambulance Service.”

Paramedic Lee Salmon, also of Penrith, was on duty that day.

“It pushed us to our clinical limits and her to her limitations of life.

“Grace is almost the same age as my own daughter Lily, so it was hugely emotional for me when, after the complications, I went and explained all that had gone on to the parents and grandparents.”