A pensioner has remortgaged his home to help send his sick granddaughter to America.

Don Bowman made the generous offer in a last-ditch bid to save three-year-old Chloe Wright, who has an advanced rare cancer.

The 67-year-old, from Pevensey Bay, will pool the money with daughter Debbie and son-in-law Darren Wright, who have also remortgaged their family home in Herne Bay, Kent.

He said: "It will be for about £100,000. We thought the money for the treatment would be in installments but they want it all up front, more than £300,000.

"She's a little devil. She's always doing little tricks and laughing. She's like any normal three-year-old."

Mr Bowman believes his granddaughter will make a complete recovery but said he would miss his family terribly when they fly to the States to test a drug, as yet unavailable in the UK.

Without the drug, Chloe is not expected to live beyond March.

The family was told Chloe's disease, rabdomyo-sarcoma, had progressed to her lungs and they should let nature take its course.

Instead, they scoured the internet and came across the clinic in Houston, Texas, which agreed to treat the little girl, offering a one-in-20 chance of survival.

Chloe was diagnosed after tests were carried out on a lump on her hip. The cancer attacks soft tissue and despite radiotherapy and chemotherapy, tumours grew in her buttocks and lungs.

Mr and Mrs Wright, Chloe and her sisters Ella and Kerry, fly to America tomorrow.

The family expect to stay for as long as it takes to get Chloe on the road to recovery.