A FREE clinic offering a vital lifeline to asthma and allergy sufferers is closing its doors due to a lack of funding, despite a Daily Echo campaign to keep the service going.

Donations poured in to the Asthma and Allergy Clinics, run by the Asthma, Allergy and Inflammation Research charity based at Southampton General Hospital, after the launch of our Fight For Breath campaign last year.

The service was granted a stay of execution after readers raised enough money to keep the clinics open for a further six months. But now it will close on June 30.

Specialist asthma nurse and fellow asthmatic Chellan Eames ran the service after setting it up eight years ago.

Although she will no longer work for the charity, she is determined to find some way to keep her service going.

She said: "I think it's a dreadful shame that they're closing down, but I'm trying to get a business plan of some sort. If I can show that over the last few years I've saved hospital beds then maybe I can get some funding.

"The clinics will stop at the end of June, but it doesn't mean I'm giving up."

Asthma sufferer Angie Higgins, of Carnation Road, Bassett, said she would be lost without Chellan and the clinics.

She said: "It's such a shame. I'm really down.

"I want to help the little ones. I would hate to see people without this clinic to help them."

Colin Stubbs's son Jamie, nine, died from an asthma attack last May.

Mr Stubbs, who lives with his wife Sharon and teenage daughter Kerrie-Ann in Studland Road, Millbrook, said: "I can't understand why they can't get funding for it.

"I don't want her to give up. It's a shame that people can't put their hand in their pocket because it helps the community."