Six-year-old, Eve Downton from Polegate, aspires to become a paramedic after recently reuniting with some of the 999 heroes who helped save her life.

Eve and her aunt, Jess Downton, recently visited SECAmb’s Polegate Make Ready Centre where they met with Emergency Care Support Workers (ECSW) Megan Rudd and Amy West and Emergency Medical Advisor (EMA) Louise Adsett – some of the team who helped save Eve’s life in June this year.

On 28 June 2025, EMA Louise picked up a 999 call from Eve’s grandfather who was concerned as Eve was unable to talk and had a temperature above 40 degrees. Noting she had epilepsy, Louise triaged the call as a category 1 incident.

“When you can’t see a patient, you can only go by what you hear.” Louise said. “However, when I started to get more of Eve’s medical history, I knew this was serious and I’m glad I took the decision to triage the call as a category 1. It was lovely to meet Eve and her aunt and see how well she is doing now. It’s a special reminder of the difference we make.”

The first crew, Megan and Amy were on scene within 10 minutes, closely followed by four more SECAmb clinicians. However, Eve’s condition began to deteriorate, and she began fitting on scene.

The team managed to stabilise Eve and took her to Conquest Hospital, where she spent three days before being transferred to Kings College Hospital in London where she was diagnosed with strep meningitis.

Megan, one of the first responders on scene, said: “It was really wonderful to see how well Eve is doing. If we hadn’t arrived when we did, the outcome for Eve could have been very different and I’m so glad she has recovered so well and is now back at school.”

Eve’s aunt, Jess added: “It’s been a long recovery for Eve and I’m thankful that we got to meet the team to try and help her make more sense of what happened. We are all so grateful for the quick care we received and can’t thank everyone enough for helping her that day.”

Eve’s visit to our Polegate Make Ready Centre included a look inside an ambulance and getting to switch on the blue lights as she shared, she now wants to become a paramedic in the future.