Professor Damian McCormack:

I might respond to this. It really upsets me when I hear families doing charitable work to gain money to go abroad to private institutions for treatment, some of which is excellent but some of which is completely bogus. Some tragic things are happening in that regard and it kills me to see it. I have never sent a patient abroad for treatment. We went abroad for years to train and, without blowing smoke, we are as well trained as any surgeon anywhere on the planet. The neuromuscular spine surgery I do in Temple Street is difficult and dangerous. Great Ormond Street does the same surgery but it was stopped, because of its complication rate, for a year and half. It could not do it as well as we do it. Children should not need to go abroad for anything.