Sandra Lewis stopped sleeping, lost weight and fell into deep depression when she learnt in November that her three-year-old daughter Sanjae had a year to live unless she had a lung transplant. She had already lost one daughter to the same rare lung-tissue disease and now she was told that only a hospital in St Louis, Missouri, in the United States, could operate on Sanjae - provided she could raise £50,000.
With little money in the bank and six other children and stepchildren to worry about, Lewis prepared herself for the worst, resigned to the brutal reality that the operation was beyond her means. Still, she contacted some newspapers and Children In Need in an attempt to generate publicity and, she hoped, donations. 'It wasn't a big enough story for them,' she told The Observer . 'Nobody was interested. But to me, my dying girl is a massive story. I was really down.'

Then something extraordinary happened. A weekly black newspaper ran a small item that was seen by a well-wisher Sandra knows only as George. He sent her £20 and suggested she call a pirate radio station that serves south-east London's black community. The station, Powerjam, began promoting a Sanjae In Need appeal a few days before Christmas. Within days, two other black stations had joined, one based near the Peckham estate where Damilola Taylor was killed in November 2000. Suddenly Lewis had powerful underground voices fighting her corner.

By last night the fund stood at £23,800, with a further £16,000 pledged, and five rival radio stations promoting it by the hour. 'The community has lifted up my spirits,' Lewis said in her Hackney council flat in east London, as she repositioned the oxygen mask that lets Sanjae breathe. 'I'm eating, sleeping, laughing again. I have a feeling we'll make it.'

The fund, and the illegal radio stations that are promoting it, have attracted pocket-money donations from five-year-olds and £2,500 pledges from a black entrepreneur. Prisoners in Belmarsh have sent £400 in cash and phonecards, while an eight-year-old raised £833 from a sponsored swim.

A man called Dave, whom Sandra had never met, bought her a mobile phone with £50 in credits after hearing that her own bill had reached £280. One woman returned the Christmas presents she had bought and donated the cash.

As word of the appeal has spread among black Londoners, prominent businesses have rallied to the cause. Last Saturday the management of Scenarios nightclub in New Cross, south-east London, donated its takings to Sanjae's fund. In one night it raised £5,012, including £10 from Kojo, a boy too young to attend but who had learnt of the collection on the radio.

'There's an old African saying that it takes a village to raise a child,' said Wayne, who, with co-presenter Kwaku, hosts the Nubian Forum talk show on Powerjam (its illegal status requiring first names only). 'Sanjae is our child. We've always known that the black community is not what the media paint it. We spend a lot of time dwelling on the negative - shootings, gangs, drugs, whatever. But this campaign has given the community something positive to focus on. It's not often you get a chance to save someone's life.'

IT BECAME clear that something was wrong with Sanjae soon after she was born, weighing 3.5lb. At six weeks she was frequently vomiting and by 15 months was short of breath and weighed only 7lb. Hospitals in Jamaica, where Sanjae was born, failed to diagnose anything beyond acute pneumonia. It was only when Lewis's husband, Lloyd - a plasterer who happened to be working at Great Ormond Street Hospital - approached a lung consultant, that fibrosing alveolitis was suggested.

This was the disease that had killed Sanjae's sister Jahna, aged three, in 1996. Within weeks Sanjae was in Great Ormond Street on oxygen and a high dose of steroids. Lewis was told her daughter needed a lung transplant or she would not reach five, but that surgeons at the hospital had never operated on such a small child: even now she weighs only 20lb. The hospital suggested specialists in the US, but only St Louis was prepared to take Sanjae, at a cost of £50,000, for what would be a 10-month stay. The hospital claims an 85 per cent success rate, although a further transplant would be needed after five or 10 years.

Six weeks ago Sanjae's condition worsened. 'You see her now, she's looking good, but in three days she could go down with another infection,' said Lewis, cuddling the strong-minded little girl who insists, at the mention of the word hospital: 'I'm not going nowhere.'

Lewis said: 'The hardest thing is to see her every day pumped up with steroids, with the oxygen mask as her life support, getting exhausted after two hours. No wonder she won't eat, with all that medication.'

Time is running short. 'We need to raise the money by the end of January, as Sanjae has to come off the steroids,' said Kwaku, 39, a part-time stand-up comedian who has led the grassroots campaign with Wayne, 32, a primary-school teacher. 'A lot of people think the Afro-Caribbean community don't stick together - but they do when given the chance. That £50,000 will be there, guaranteed. That's the amount of faith I have in our community.'

Kwaku raised his first £1,200 from family and friends; a comedy gig raised a further £200. South London community radio stations such as Genesis and Galaxy have each raised thousands. Lewis says that the mainstream media - with honourable exceptions, such as the Hackney Gazette - would not even return her calls.

Last week the Lewises' flat was busy with volunteers offering to leaflet outlying parts of London and to call schools, churches and old people's homes seeking collections. Well-wishers arrived with donations and toys for the children. Virgin has offered free flights to St Louis.

On his Powerjam show last Tuesday, Wayne talked of expanding the appeal to create a community fund 'which everyone pays into during the good times so it's there when hard times lick'.

Lewis is starting to think ahead. 'Everyone's been helping me so much, at least now I can spend some time with Sanjae and the other children, who've been telling me I must hate them. I have a great feeling about this.'
written by David Rowan


The Sanjae in Need Barclays Bank account is 40310913, sort code 20 46 60.