MORE than 100 youngsters at a North-East hospital were given cameras to record their experiences for a new television series.

The ITV series Kids With Cameras: Diary of a Children’s Ward stars a variety of North-East youngsters who talk to the cameras about their illness. The first programme is on Thursday (August 7) at 9pm..

The children are seen interviewing their parents and recording themselves undergoing treatment, eating, playing, taking medication and interacting with medical staff.

The videos are recorded at the Great North Children's Hospital in Newcastle by children in hospital for a variety of reasons, including everyday injury, major surgery or life-threatening illness.

In the first of three programmes, viewers are introduced to a six-year-old with anaemia who needs regular blood transfusions, an eight-year-old boy who is suffering with severe eczema, a young girl who has been seriously ill with a brain infection, a girl with juvenile arthritis who is a regular outpatient and others.

Six-year-old Samuel has anaemia and has been a regular visitor to the hospital since he was three months old.

He has to have monthly blood transfusions and has a permanent portacath – a small appliance connected to a vein where medicine or blood can be given - in the side of his chest.

He said: “My friends don’t have portacaths in and they’re not poorly like me and they don’t have go to hospital like me as well.”

He records one of his regular trips to hospital for a blood transfusion. He is very tired before getting the blood but afterwards he is full of life and races around the hospital corridors, after which he says: “I feel loads, loads,loads better.”