A five-year-old Dundee girl has enjoyed her first day of school despite being given only a one in a million chance of survival when she was born.
Sarah Bhatti was born with a diaphragmatic hernia: a hole in the diaphragm that allows part of organs from the abdomen, such as the stomach, spleen and liver, to push up into the chest cavity near the lungs.
Her condition was so critical that she was given just a few hours to live but has now been given a clean bill of health and was able to join her new classmates in primary at Eastern Primary School in Broughty Ferry on Tuesday.
Doctors knew in advance that Sarah would be born with potentially fatal condition and so had arranged a plan for her delivery.
As soon as her mother Naz went into labour, she was rushed to Edinburgh by ambulance. However, that was just the start of Sarah’s journey.
She was then taken to Royal Hospital for Sick Children’s in Glasgow (Yorkhill) for an operation to repair her internal organs.
Even after coming through that, doctors were unsure she would survive, with one even telling her distraught parents there was only a one in a million chance Sarah would recover.
The family spent months shuttling between their home in Brook Street, Broughty Ferry, and Glasgow to check on their daughter’s progress and watched in amazement as her health continued to improve.
When she became strong enough, she was transferred to Ninewells and finally allowed back to her family home.
She required oxygen until just before she was one year old when, to the surprise of doctors, she was able to survive without it.
Now, four years later, she has started primary school a day her father Mohammed admitted he feared he would never see.
Mohammed said his youngest daughter had been so excited about starting school that he was up at 6am.
He said: “It has been a double celebration for us. It has been the end of Ramadan and then Sarah starting school.
“This is a great day for us. Every time something went wrong or we had to take Sarah back to Ninewells, we wondered if we would get to see this.
“Sarah has been a really brave girl.”
Sarah joined her nine-year-old sister Zarah at Eastern Primary while her older sister Aishah, 13, and brother Tahir, 12, both attend Grove Academy.
Mohammed thanked the medical staff at Ninewells Hospital who have looked after Sarah since she was born.
He has also written letters to Prime Minister David Cameron and the Queen about his daughter’s first day at school and received responses from 10 Downing Street and the Queen’s Lady-In-Waiting.