Viagra keeping 2-year-old boy alive!

London, Nov 21 : A two-year-old boy who suffers a rare illness is breathing life because of Viagra. Calvin Muteesa, who's believed to be Britain's youngest regular Viagra user, was first prescribed the remedy when he was just three months old.

Now, he is having taken the drug - for up to six times a day - for the past 30 months.

Calvin suffers from pulmonary arterial hypertension, a rare condition which means his blood pressure is dangerously high. This starves his lungs of oxygen-rich blood.

The youngster struggles for breath and his heart has to work twice as hard to force blood to his lungs.

The impotence drug relaxes his pulmonary artery, which carries blood to the lungs, and allows more blood and oxygen through.

Calvin's mum Maureen was warned that tests had revealed that her baby would be born with bowel and kidney problems - and after he was born he had corrective surgery when he was just a day old. But fetal scans could not pick up his lung problem.

"When Calvin was little you could see his chest going up and down and at times he was struggling to breathe. We all thought it was something to do with his kidneys," the Sun quoted Maureen, as saying.

Medicals experts believed that something was seriously wrong with the boy when he was just three months old and what appeared to be a simple cold quickly turned into bronchitis.

Single mum Maureen, 35, from Thamesmead, South London, recalls: "I woke up one morning and went to get Calvin's milk. When I took it to him his eyes were not moving and he was almost not breathing. His heart was racing and I was terrified it would stop. I called an ambulance and he was taken to the Royal London Hospital."

Tests revealed that the boy's oxygen levels were dangerously low and medics gave him more.

Maureen says: "Every time they tried to get him off the oxygen it was almost as if he had stopped breathing. It was like I was dreaming. To see your child go from having a cold to intensive care and being put on a ventilator was terrifying. When they told me there was something wrong with my child and no cure it hit me so hard. It was like someone saying you are going to die. They started giving him Viagra straight away.

"When I first saw the packet I didn't know what to think. I asked the nurse, 'Why on earth are you giving my son that, it's for something completely different. But you could see the difference as soon as he started taking it. It was amazing."

ANI