It was July 2024 and Florina Racheru was enjoying a break in her native Romania with her daughter Maya, six - who was usually full of life - collapsed. Florina, a recently qualified nurse, recalls: “She was getting tired, but we never thought for one second it was her heart. Maya was pale and couldn’t breathe properly. She complained of tummy pain. I took her to the emergency department.” Tests revealed Maya’s heart was only functioning at 20%.

To Florina’s horror, she then had a stroke. Unable to speak, eat or move her limbs, she then went into cardiac arrest - meaning her heart stopped beating. “Her heart stopped beating for several minutes,” says Florina, who lives in Ilford, east London, and has a son, Fabritzio, 18. “It was agonising.”

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Four weeks later, she was transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospitalin London. Florina says :“They said the cause was likely to be a rare neuromuscular disease – and the main impact was on her heart. Without a new heart, Maya would die. It was unthinkable. She was fighting for life and hooked up to a machine called a Berlin Heart, that helped her heart to beat. In September she was put on the transplant list.”

But despite a change in legislation, after a Mirror campaign backed automatic opt-in for organ donation - which became law in England in 2020, shocking stats have revealed that while demand for organ transplants is up, donations are down year on year.

UK numbers, provided by NHS Blood and Transplant, from April 2024 to March 2025 show transplants have dropped 3% in the last year and donors are down 7%. The stats, according to NHS Blood and Transplant, show the need for people to still register as donors. They may not realise that families still need to be consulted and this can result in organs not being donated - contrary to their wishes.

When her daughter’s life hung in the balance, Florina says: “I knew the chances of Maya getting a heart were slim but I had to believe it would happen – she couldn’t spend the rest of her life in hospital. She was improving in so many other ways. By 2025 she was walking and no longer needed her feeding or breathing tube. The GOSH Charityswept us up and looked after us both for the 10 and a half months Maya was in hospital.”

Then, last spring, Florina received a life-changing call - a compatible heart had been found. She says: “I was happy, overwhelmed, Terrified too that it might not work and we would lose her.” Following 12 hours in surgery, Maya woke with her new heart "She's doing so well,” says Florina. “She has three-monthly check-ups at GOSH.

She has weakness on her right side, so walks with a brace and needs help with her right hand and speech. But she will start back at school at Easter. I want to say the biggest thank you. I have a happy, healthy girl. I'm now urging people to opt in to the donor register. I also want there to be more funding to help children with rare conditions like Maya's.”

Aoife Regan, Director of Impact at GOSH Charity said: “We’re proud to have supported Maya and her family and it's brilliant to see her doing well following her life-changing heart transplant. Maya’s story shows the importance of specialist care, how vital it is that people are aware of how they can consent to their organs being donated, and is also a powerful reminder of the need for further research into rare diseases in children.”

An NHS Blood and Transplant spokesperson added: “The most important factor in donation is people confirming support. Ninety per cent of people honoured their family members' decision last year, when they had either registered their decision to donate on the NHS Organ Donor Register or had spoken with their family about wanting to be an organ donor.”

*Register at www.organdonation.nhs.uk/register-your-decision; For more information, about Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity visit gosh.org

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