Transplants woman dies

Press, 29 May 1989, Page 1

Transplants woman dies

PA Invercargill The first New Zealander to receive a heart-lung transplant in London, Miss Ann Crawford, died in Dunedin Hospital yesterday. Miss Crawford, aged 26, of Myross Bush, near Invercargill, received a new heart and lungs at Harefield Hospital on July 29, 1985. Three years later she was back at Harefield for a second heart-lung transplant because her body was rejecting the organs she had received. But she made a surprising recovery and doctors at Harefield sent her home last October without undergoing the surgery. Miss Crawford said then she might still need another transplant in the future. Her engagement to a Waianawa schoolteacher, Mr Paul Anderson, was announced last July and the wedding had been planned for early next year. Her older brother and spokesman for the Crawford family, Mr Robert Crawford, said her condition had been slipping because of complications with her liver and kidneys. She had been in Dunedin

Hospital “on and off” for about six weeks. “She just ran out of strength,” he said. Miss Crawford took ill with influenza and pneumonia in the winter of 1976 and her lungs were seriously affected. After eight years of almost constant hospitalisation, a double transplant became her only hope.