Media Centre

Welcome to the Tiny Tickers’ media centre where you can stay up-to-date on news about our work,  heart family stories and our current campaigns. You can read all our recent press releases in our news section.

We can provide expert spokespeople on a range of congenital heart defect-related topics. We can also supply the latest facts and figures and can answer any questions about heart conditions in babies.

What does Tiny Tickers do?

Tiny Tickers is a small national charity that works to improve the chances of babies born with a serious heart condition. We want every baby with a serious heart condition to have the best chance of survival and quality of life. We’ve got a proud track record of helping improve the detection, care and treatment of babies with congenital heart defects. Founded in 1999 by world-renowned fetal cardiologist Dr Helena Gardiner, she realised many of the babies she was caring for could have been helped earlier.

One in every 125 babies is born with a heart problem but fewer than half of those are spotted during pregnancy and, in some parts of the UK, detection rates are as low as 1 in 4. That means over 1,000 newborns leave hospitals in the UK every year with no one realising they have a potentially life-threatening heart condition. Babies with undetected heart defects will often fall into the early stages of heart failure – significantly impacting their long-term quality of life. Some will die before anyone realises they have a poorly heart, or before getting the surgery that would save them. We want to increase early detection rates of cardiac conditions thus improving a baby’s chances of survival and long-term quality of life.