SIXTEEN years ago, Naomi Gardner was fighting for her life on a special care baby unit - born so premature she was within the legal abortion limit.

Now, with a clean bill of health and settling down to life at college, she is urging people to back the campaign fighting to secure the future of the unit which saved her life.

Naomi was born on Fairfield's Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU) three months premature weighing a tiny 2lbs 12ozs -smaller than a bag of sugar.

Back then, women were still legally allowed to have abortions 28 weeks into their pregnancy and Naomi's mum Wendy spent the next nine weeks travelling back and forth to the unit to be with her daughter.

But Naomi, from Unsworth, defied the odds and is now a healthy teenager with dreams of university after passing her GCSEs with flying colours.

Naomi, who is considering a career as a paediatrician, has made regular return visits to the unit to meet up with the staff who had nursed her. She said: "It is really nice to come back. I saw a baby girl who was the same size as me and it was a shock to see how small two pounds actually is."

Fairfield's SCBU is currently facing an uncertain future following proposals to transform children and maternity services across the North West. The proposals, called Making it Better, would halve the number of hospitals with special care baby units and introduce 'birthing centres' staffed only by midwives.

The original proposals were released last year naming Fairfield as one of the hospitals to lose its SCBU and sparked the Fairfield Baby Lifeline Society's Babies First campaign to fight the proposals with a protest march and collect more than 30,000 signatures against the plans.

Naomi, who was a pupil at Castlebrook High School at the time, also decided to take action and had all her school friends sign petitions in protest.

Although the revised proposals have yet to name sites, Naomi believes people should still show their support for the campaign. She said: "The campaign to keep the special care baby unit is so important. I think it is sad they might get rid of something so vital after all the help done to all the local children and babies."

Mum Wendy said: "If she had been born in a unit in Oldham for example, her dad Neville worked in London and I was on my own all week and I can't imagine having to travel to Oldham for more than nine weeks. People need to support the Babies First campaign now more than ever."

She added: "Naomi gives hope and, when she goes to visit, the nurses introduce her to parents with babies on the unit to show how well she is doing and it is nice to say this is my baby who survived."