The father of a Co Down girl who was "saved by medical cannabis" has launched a new health centre in the hope of helping others who feel they have nowhere else to turn.
Jorja Emerson was born in 2016 with a rare chromosome abnormality that caused a number of side effects, including an aggressive form of epilepsy that would cause her to have 30 or more seizures a day.
Her father, Robin Emerson, said that her condition had deteriorated to such a degree that she ended up in intensive care twice, with him claiming he was told on her final visit to "take her home and let her die".
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Robin told Belfast Live that he refused to give up on his daughter and began to research her condition and possible medicines and discovered that medical cannabis could be the solution and set about campaigning in order for Jorja to access it.
In 2018 Jorja became one of the first children in the UK to be prescribed medical cannabis and has now been "almost seizure free" for years and living a full and healthy life.
Robin said: "Before Jorja was prescribed medical cannabis she was having 30 or more seizures a day and was on seven different types of medication to control them, but nothing ever worked.
"It ended up getting to the point where she was being admitted to intensive care and doctors were telling us to give up on her, which is something that we had no intention of doing.
"After researching her condition and speaking with other parents of children with it, we found that medical cannabis could be a solution for her and after joining other families campaigning for it in the UK, we were eventually successful and Jorja became one of the first children in the UK to be prescribed it.
"Now it is five years later and Jorja is thriving and living her life to the full and is essentially seizure free, showing the benefits that medical cannabis can have on patients."
In an effort to help others who have been through the same difficult circumstances as his family, Robin has now launched the Jorja Emerson Centre in London, which he says is the UK's first Innovative Medical Health Centre.
He says that the aim of the clinic will be to provide an outlet for treatment for those who are struggling to access beneficial medical treatment for a wide array of different conditions, including general paediatrics, neurology, chronic pain, mental illness, addiction, autism diagnosis & ADHD.
The Jorja Emerson Centre, which is close to Paddington Station, has in-house diagnostic services such as MRI, genetic testing, sequencing and ultrasound and an accredited lab and will also be launching its own clinical trials in the coming months.
Robin continued: "After campaigning for Jorja I saw how many other people and families were in the same tough position as us and I felt that there was more that I could be doing to support them.
"The aim of the clinic is to provide ground-breaking treatments, clinical diagnostics and tests, with an emphasis on access and affordability, as a big barrier to many treatments that patients are trying to access is price. It is not a medical cannabis focused centre, although it is one of the treatments that it is able to provide.
"After opening a few weeks ago the centre has already received a great response from patients, with 37 contacting us on our first day enquiring about treatment.
"We have assembled a team of expert doctors and clinicians who are confident about our goals moving forward and our ability to help patients.
"A key aspect of the clinic will be that we will be starting our own clinical trials, with a medical cannabis epilepsy trial inspired by Jorja starting in July of this year, which we hope will prove to be a success and provide stronger medical evidence for the treatments here in the UK.
"When I started this journey with Jorja, our main focus was to ensure that she was able to live a healthy and happy life, and I never imagined that I would be in this position seven years later where I have launched our own clinic to help thousands of others."
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