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Sir Doug Ellis’ Aston Villa connections have prompted an act of kindness benefiting a Birmingham hospital.

The former Villa chairman has funded a £250,000 piece of equipment at Queen Elizabeth Hospital after being touched by the plight of his Steve Stride’s son.

Matthew Stride, 26, whose dad was club secretary under Sir Doug at Villa for more than three decades, recently had an operation to remove a brain tumour.

Sir Doug was at the hospital yesterday to present a a cheque for £100,000, which is worth £125,000 with government Gift Aid taken into account.

Sir Doug and Matthew Stride

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It will be used to fund a special Nexstim brain scanner machine, the kind of apparatus used to save the feeling in Matthew’s left arm.

Ismail Ughratdar, the Consultant Neurosurgeon who performed the operation on Matthew, and Mike Hammond, Chief Executive of QEHB Charity, gratefully received the cheque from Sir Doug.

Matthew, dad Steve and mum Carolyn were also in attendance for the presentation

Sir Doug said: “I’m so pleased to be able to financially support this piece of equipment which I heard about and in particular for Matthew Stride.

“He’s the son of my secretary at Aston Villa, Steven Stride, who was with me for 35 years and I’m only too pleased to be able to finance this wonderful piece of equipment.”

The QE’s neurosurgery department is the first in the UK to purchase a scanner of this kind. The innovative device allows doctors to perform a pre-surgery brain scan on their patients, which they then use during the operation as a ‘map’ of the patient’s brain.

It is much safer and more accurate than the only current alternatives for this type of brain surgery, which include an ‘awake craniotomy’, wherein the patient remains conscious while the surgeon operates on their brain and is asked to sing or speak throughout so that the doctor knows they haven’t ‘gone too far’.

Matthew was able to have a pre-surgery scan using the Nexstim device, which was being trialled at the QE at the time.

He said: I recently had a craniotomy operation to remove a tumour from my brain. This machine helped save the use of my left arm, without this machine I would have lost all use in my left arm.

“It’s been fantastic. The surgeons at the QE have been amazing and the staff here have just been fantastic.

“It’s very kind of Sir Doug to donate the money so they could acquire this machine.”