Please Help Billy and other children like him get the treatment that they Deserve and everyone to get behind this campaign.
A severely epileptic boy who was the UK’s first patient to receive cannabis legally on the NHS has been handed his “death warrant” after his prescription was stopped on the orders of the government.
Billy Caldwell, 12, from Castlederg, Co Tyrone, suffered up to 100 fits a day until he was taken to America, where Douglas Nordli, a child epilepsy specialist, treated him with two types of cannabis oil.
Billy’s mother, Charlotte, says that as a result of that treatment, her son knows that she is “his mummy”, he goes to school and is learning to ride and swim.
In April last year, when lack of money forced the family to return to Northern Ireland, Billy’s GP, Dr Brendan O’Hare, agreed to prescribe the two unlicensed medicinal oils: cannabidiol, which is legal in the UK, and THCA, which is categorised as a class B drug. They are supplied by an American company.
Before taking the oils, she said, Billy suffered from repeated and prolonged seizures. Each had to be treated as a medical emergency with drugs and oxygen. “I would sleep with my arm around him, or his leg round my leg — I always had to be touching him because I would have to know when his breathing changed,” Charlotte said.
Charlotte, a single mother who is Billy’s full-time carer, said her son was “amazing now”. She said: “Sometimes in the past I would have questioned if he knew I was his mummy, because he never showed any signs. Now out of the blue he got up on my knee and gave me eye contact and gave me a hug.”
Please Help Billy and other children like him get the treatment that they Deserve and everyone to get behind this campaign. Support Charlotte and Billy every step of the way and show the Government that we are not backing down.
Please sign the petition here