DEVOTED father David Laws has given his daughter the gift of life.

The 38-year-old donated one of his kidneys to Ellyn, ten, to give her a chance of a normal life.

The youngster, from Walkergate, Newcastle, became ill when she was two and had a kidney transplant aged four.

Last year, the organ failed and she was taken to hospital for emergency treatment.

Since then, she has spent ten hours a night on a dialysis machine that has cleaned her blood and kept her alive.

Ellyn, a pupil at Walkergate Primary School, had been on a waiting list at Newcastle's Freeman Hospital for a new kidney.

Desperate to help his daughter, Mr Laws went for tests and found he was a donor match.

At the end of last month, they both went into hospital for simultaneous operations, and this week, Ellyn came home.

Mr Laws, a security control room operator for Newcastle City Council, said: "When I found out I was a match, it was the obvious solution."

Since the operation, Ellyn's mother, Alyson, 37, a nurse with North Tyneside Primary Care Trust, said: "She is doing really well, and even though she is still recovering from the operation, you can tell she is so much better already.

"It is also wonderful that she is not on the dialysis every night. We used to have to get up through the night to check it, but now we all sleep a lot better."