What a smashing photo of Margaux Barker recovering after her heart operation at Leeds General Infirmary (Please don’t close heart unit, June 17).

However, it got me thinking... How can David Cameron spend millions bombing Libya, millions on vaccines for the world, and yet cannot hold back a few millions to keep the Leeds LGI heart unit running?

Families should not have to travel two hours to Newcastle for treatment, it is totally unacceptable.

Again we see an example of politicians showing and telling the world what a caring and compassionate country we are… but seem to ignore the obvious in their own backyard.

So come on, Mr Cameron – and your highly-paid hospital executives – justify the closing of this unit. It’s a disgrace.

Tony Wash, Windsor Drive, Wigginton, York.

Yorkshire is on the brink of losing a centre of medical excellence, the children’s heart unit at LGI.

By reducing the number of such centres from 11 to six or seven, it is felt that clinical outcomes will improve. In theory this sounds a perfectly sensible thing to do. However, it fails take into account the emotion and stress of needing to use of one these centres.

Imagine knowing that your child/grandchild/niece/nephew will potentially have to spend two hours in an ambulance needing a lifesaving procedure. Imagine not being able to be with that child because of a shortage of parental accommodation.

Imagine the stress that travelling between York and Newcastle would cause. Imagine having to take an oxygen-dependent child on the train to Newcastle during rush hour to be seen for an out-patient clinic.

Imagine the stress of the parents and wider family. Now imagine the effects of all these additional stresses on the child and how these will affect their condition or recovery.

If the heart unit at LGI is closed down, people won’t have to imagine. You may think that you will never find yourself needing such a place, things like that happen to other people.

That’s what we thought – they have saved our son three times, and we would be lost without them. Please go to www.chsf.org.uk/home to see what you can do.

Rob Oliver, Crombie Avenue, York