Battling Tain parents keep up fight for Alfie-Ray (En)
by Lynne Bradshaw
NHS Highland has come under fire from the family of Alfie-Ray Hayhurst
A ROSS-SHIRE youngster who last year couldn’t speak due to severe autism is now a transformed child thanks to behavioural therapy and special food supplements.
Alfie-Ray Hayhurst’s parents are delighted with their son’s progress but say if they hadn’t devoted all their energy into personally researching and paying for therapies, the four-year-old boy would still be a zombie, living in his own little world.
The couple from Tain maintain NHS Highland has been obstructive in their fight to help their son and has failed in its duty of care.They have lodged several complaints and may pursue legal action in the future.
“We have in just over two years taken Alfie-Ray from a drooling, aggressive non-verbal boy who lived in his own world to a happy, partly verbal boy who actually managed to say ‘love you mummy’ and mean it recently,” said his dad, Dave.
“We are lucky to have very good GPs and also a good paediatrician. There is also a brilliant dietician called Dave Rex but even these people are restricted by the management above who talk the talk, but when it comes to patient care, put cost first and last.”
The Hayhursts are convinced that immunisations damaged their son’s immune system, which is at the root of his autism and are determined to get tests and results to prove that beyond reasonable doubt.
They are 99 per cent sure that once they cure Alfie-Ray’s stomach problems, which were caused by the immune system damage, all his autistic symptoms will leave him.
The Hayhursts first spoke out publicly early in 2011 when their lack of confidence in the learning support offered by the NHS led them to pay to take Alfie-Ray to the Growing Minds Institute in Florida. He found his voice on the first day of the Applied Behaviour Analysis course and spoke a handful of words and phrases.
Said Dave: “We are delighted, he is a different boy now. It is down to a combination of two things — behaviour therapy with early intervention consultant, Ruth Glynne-Owen, and the biomedical side, using vitamin and mineral supplements and a toxin remover.”
Shortly after Alfie-Ray returned from America, he came down with croup and five bouts of the hand, foot and mouth virus in six months, as well as constipation and diarrhoea, which meant he regressed and lost many of his words.
The family got him tested through the University of Newcastle which led them to believe his immune system was damaged, causing problems with his gut. The say they were lucky to find a private doctor who prescribed low dose Naltrexone which resulted in his immune system beginning to regulate.
Dave said Alfie-Ray went from sleeping around four hours a night to up to 12 hours after using a combination of melatonin and magnesium sulphate. The introduction of a food supplement called NDF+ resulted in a marked improvement in his use of words.
The family though claims its attempts to share information they have gleaned with the NHS has essentially fallen on deaf ears.
“We know from what we have done to date we can fully recover him in the near future. In fact in front of a couple of witnesses we had two days of complete normality and for the first time saw the boy behind the autism.”
Mr Hayhurst believes a lot of parents are being refused a proper standard of care.
The Hayhursts’ local MP, John Thurso confirmed he is involved in Alfie-Ray’s case with NHS Highland but declined to comment further.
A spokeswoman for NHS Highland said a meeting was being arranged with the family of Alfie-Ray.
It is understood the meeting is being set up to discuss the complaints lodged by the family.
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