Classmates patch in for ill 4 year old's gift

Miron Girmey, Jahnaya Miki present Eva Mitchell with the quilt they and their Mt Cook School classmates made for her. Photo / Greg Bowker

The plight of a 4-year-old girl who has spent all but three months of her life in hospital has moved a class of Year 4 schoolchildren to make her a gift.

Not long after she was born, Eva Mitchell was rushed to intensive care with a hole in her diaphragmwhich was causing damage to her organs.

She has had many operations in Starship hospital and has had strokes since.

But she is now a smiling, chatty child in the hospital's general ward.

"She's probably not going to get better," said her mother, Tiff Mitchell.

Eva was having her worst year yet, having had a major operation only last week, Ms Mitchell said.

But she was still a happy child.

"This is Eva. When you're a really sick kid, you don't know you're sick like an adult would," she said.

"Nothing stops you from loving life. And it doesn't make you immune from getting time outs - at all."

Eight-year-olds Miron Girmey and Jahnaya Miki visited her yesterday, representing their Year 4 class at Mt Cook School in Wellington.

Twenty-nine classmates heard about Eva's situation and organised themselves to make her a patchwork quilt.

Their teacher, Sam Silby, said the class spent four weeks incorporating the quilt-making into school subjects and leading the project themselves.

They organised rosters, designed their own patches and arranged for parents, teachers and other visitors to come in and help.

Miron and Jahnaya flew up from Wellington yesterday, sponsored by Air New Zealand - it had been Jahnaya's first flight - and spent time with Eva around the hospital.

Once the Year 4 pupils had realised they could do nothing to make Eva better, they decided to make her something for her comfort instead.