ECHO charity celebrates Heart Month at the PRUH
24 February 2026 - Charity spends time with children receiving cardiology care and their families
A team from ECHO, a charity supporting children and young people with heart conditions and their families, spent a day at Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH) on Friday 20 February.
Charity staff visited the paediatric cardiology service at PRUH, speaking to staff, parents and young patients about how their work makes a difference to families.
Dr Ola Elmasry, Consultant Paediatrician at PRUH, said: “For some of our younger patients, a trip to hospital can be a distressing time, and we are always looking for ways to make the experience welcoming and fun. The brilliant team at ECHO have provided us with a range of activities to help entertain the children we care for, including toys, an electronic tablet, and magazines. We have also worked together to develop a short animated film about what to expect when attending a heart clinic, aimed at younger children.
“February is Heart Month, and so we felt it was perfect timing to open our doors to ECHO and show them how children and their families at PRUH have benefited through their generosity and kindness.”
Samantha Johnson, CEO of the ECHO charity, said: “Heart Month gives us a great opportunity to work in partnership with our lovely colleagues at the Congenital Heart Disease Network hospitals. Events like Friday enable us to reach families in the combined clinic setting – finding support closer to home is often crucial to children and their families when living with congenital heart conditions. We were delighted to see first-hand how the resources we’ve provided are making such a difference to the families we serve. Whilst we cannot remove all the difficulties encountered, we can find ways to make them a little easier to deal with by supporting both the clinical staff and patients alike and through the provision of resources.”
To find out more about the work of ECHO, visit https://echo-uk.org/