A brave schoolboy, who underwent life-saving surgery, put his face to a national campaign to encourage people to donate organs.

Just over a year ago 11-year-old Daniel Whybrow, of Princess Drive, High Woods, Colchester, underwent a major heart operation to replace a closed-up valve.

At the time the threat of having a heart attack hung over him but now the Gilberd School pupil can run, jump and play with his friends with barely any restrictions.

Mum and dad Deborah, 37 and Alan, 47, said they had feared the worst after Daniel was taken ill at just three years old.

"Consultants from the Royal Brompton Hospital in London told us he had a condition which meant his aortic valve was closing at one end.

"They said he could have had a heart attack at any time and would have to operate," Alan said yesterday (Monday).

Despite trying to carry out a transplant when he was four, surgeons decided to wait after the youngster clinically died twice while being operated on.

"They decided to wait until he was nine or ten because then he would then not need another one until he was 18.

"It will have to be changed again then for an adult one but if they had done it when he was four he would have had to go through it at six and then nine. Because he had been revived from dying twice they did not want to risk it," he said.

Mr Whybrow, who is Daniel's step-father but adopted him and his brother when they were small, said they could not thank the hospital enough.

"We have no details about the family who donated the valve but obviously without them we don't know what would have happened," he added.

Bosses at the hospital invited Daniel to appear on a national campaign poster urging people to consider donating their hearts if something happened to them.

His face will be seen in libraries, offices, doctors surgeries and health centres across the country.

Campaign call - Daniel Whybrow, 11, who is featured on a new poster calling for organ donors, with mum and dad Debbie and Alan.

Picture: TERRY WEEDEN

By Lauren Spurgeon

Reporter's e-mail: lauren_spurgeon@thisisessex.co.uk

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.