TWENTY-FOUR hours after receiving a new liver, little Lennox Nicholson was said to be "doing well" last night.

The five-month-old baby, who needed a liver transplant to save his life after developing an incurable bile duct condition, was given a new liver on Tuesday in a ten-hour operation.

Now his parents, Simon Nicholson, 21, and Amy Robinson, 20, from Guisborough, east Cleveland, can only watch and wait at St James University Hospital in Leeds.

Mr Nicholson said yesterday: "Doctors have told us everything has gone very much to plan.

"This is absolutely fantastic news and as far as we know there are no complications.

"Amy and I have been waiting for this for months and the long hours of the operation have been like a lifetime.

"We are so grateful to the donor and their family. We don't know who it was, but words cannot express how grateful we are."

"There was nothing Amy and I could do apart from sit and wait.

"Amy has mixed emotions. She is very happy everything has gone okay, but sad that someone has had to die to give our little boy life."

A spokesman for St James Hospital said: "The next few days will be crucial and our thoughts are with Lennox's family and also with the family who allowed the transplant to go ahead."

Last night, UK Transplant officials said they hoped that the publicity around the case of Lennox Nicholson will encourage more people to join the national organ donor register.

While the number of UK organ transplants so far this year is roughly in line with the previous year, there are fears that the North-East will finish the year below the target for heart operations.

The Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, which provides heart and lung transplant facilities for much of Northern England, is funded to perform 80 heart or lung transplants in the current financial year.

But so far, the Tyneside transplant centre has only carried out 17 heart transplants and 30 lung transplants, including one combined heart and lung operation.

Lyn Holt, heart transplant co-ordinator at the Freeman, said that unless there was a sudden increase in donor organs, the Freeman would probably only transplant about 60 patients by the end of April next year.

Agonisingly for the people waiting for new organs in the region, a significant number of potential donor organs are wasted because families either had never thought of organ donation or did not know that their deceased loved one had put their name on the national organ donor register.

"We don't get all the organs we could retrieve.

Families are still refusing to give consent, even when their next of kin is on the register."

In the UK the total number of people needing an organ transplant has slightly increased in the past year.

Currently 94 are waiting for a new heart, 5,686 are waiting for a new kidney and 355 are waiting for a new liver.

There are 12.8 million people on the national organ donor register and UK Transplant is hoping to reach the 13 million mark soon.

To register as a donor ring 0845 60 60 400.

Waiting for generosity

NEWS of a successful organ transplant will bring renewed hope for Susan Taberner.

Mrs Taberner, a 49-year-old mother-of-two, and grandmother of three, was put on the Freeman Hospital's waiting list for a heart transplant in October.

She joins 16 other adults who are waiting for new hearts, lungs or combinations of hearts and lungs in the area served by the Freeman transplant unit.

Three children need new hearts and three more need new lungs.

While she puts on a brave face about her situation, she knows that she will need a new heart in the near future.

"I want to see my three grandbairns grow up," said Susan, who lives in Brotton, near Saltburn, in east Cleveland.

"I was born with a bad heart and I have been in and out of hospitals all of my life.

I have had four big operations so far.

"I've been been told that my heart is like a car engine - they have been able to patch it up in the past but now I need a new engine."

Susan, who lives with her husband Michael, has been following the story of five-month-old Lennox Nicholson from Guisborough.

She hopes that publicity about the little boy's liver transplant - which also gave new life to an unidentified woman patient - will encourage more people to come forward and join the national organ donor register.

"Until I was told I needed a new heart, nobody in my family had ever talked about organ donation. Now my daughter Nicola has said she would be willing to be a donor if anything happened."

Surrounded by her grandchildren, Abbey, two, Danny, three, and Holly, four, Susan says she is grateful for the support and love from her family - particularly Nicola, 28, who she describes as "her rock" - but is now dependent on the generosity of some future donor and their family.