Oscar Saxelby-Lee returns to school after cancer treatment

A six-year-old boy has returned to school after months of treatment for an aggressive form of leukaemia.

Oscar Saxelby-Lee, from Worcester, underwent CAR-T therapy in Singapore with the help of £500,000 raised through crowdfunding.

He has now been cancer-free for 10 months, and had his first session back at Pitmaston Primary School.

Oscar's mother, Olivia Saxelby, said he was "buzzing" to be back with his friends.

On Thursday, Oscar went in for his first session of 30 minutes at the school, where he was reunited with some of his friends.

"Oscar wants to go in and see all of his friends, he wants to be in his class, but he can't, it is not that easy," Ms Saxelby said.

"We have to be really careful on how we transition him back and that means very steadily and also with a very small amount of people around him.

"He was buzzing, he had a beaming smile on his face, it was just amazing… it is just amazing, just incredible."

His head teacher, Kate Wilcock, added: "He was quite quiet to start with, and then he started chatting and leading the group, and you could see Ozzy was back and he was in the building."

Oscar had been undergoing treatment at Birmingham Children's Hospital for acute lymphoblastic leukaemia from December 2018, but the decision was made to take him overseas for the treatment after he had stem-cell treatment in the UK, but tests showed cancer was still present.

Ms Saxelby previously said the therapy, which was not available to Oscar on the NHS, was specifically developed for individual patients and involves reprogramming their immune system cells, which are used to target the cancer.

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