THE LOCAL campaign to send critically-ill Dunfermline tot Sara Thackray to the US for life-saving treatment got a £14,000 boost from Asda yesterday.

Little Sara, now three, has battled leukaemia since she was seven months old. Her parents, Lynn and Grant, are pinning their hopes on a revolutionary treatment developed in North Carolina. Specialists can carry out bone marrow transplants without using radiation and the procedure is Sara’s only hope.

Lynn and Grant tragically lost their first daughter, Tia, in October 2001. She was 20 months old when she died from croup. Only months later they discovered Sara had acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. But the couple have had happier times, with the birth of a healthy son, Grant junior, a year ago.

After a spell in remission, Sara’s leukaemia returned in June, prompting the community to raise the money required to send her to America for treatment, which could cost from £250,000 to £450,000.

The fund now stands at over £320,000 but doctors will only treat Sara when the percentage of cancer cells in her blood falls below a certain level. Lynn and Grant have had an anxious few days after Sara was rushed to hospital with a lung infection on Friday.

Her granddad, Peter Thackray, said the episode had turned his family’s lives upside down again. He said, “Sara keeps getting knockbacks. Her temperature keeps spiking and she has been coughing up blood because of the lung infection. It has set her parents on edge. All of this would have been much easier if they hadn’t lost Tia.

“But the support has been excellent. It’s great how something like this brings people together. Some people have given very generously.”

Staff at Halbeath and St Leonard’s stores raised the total by check-out collections, raffle and guess the teddy’s birthday contest.