Toddler Alicia Hunter has been in and out of hospital most of her life but doctors are puzzled as to why she keeps getting ill.

Her frantic parents are now hoping to raise an a initial £1,000 for private diagnosis tests.

The two-year-old’s mum, Zoe Wallington, from Gillingham, said they first realised Alicia was not well when she was six months old.

Miss Wallington, also mum to Leon, six, and Ellie, five, said: “We put it down to germs and bugs coming back from school, but when she was around a year old she was still constantly ill.

“She was just sleeping all the time and she stopped eating and just drank milk. We were constantly going to the doctors and we were told that ‘babies get ill’. But we knew there was something else to it.”

On a trip to Alicia’s GP in September last year Miss Wallington was asked if Alicia was anaemic and her doctor carried out a blood test.

At 7pm the same night the doctor rang and told her to go straight to the hospital as she needed a blood transfusion.

The A&E doctor disagreed so the tot was put on iron tablets and sent home.

But her parents were not happy and so Miss Wallington and Alicia’s father, Ross Hunter, took her to the hospital later in the month where she had a transfusion.

The 24-year-old said: “Alicia got better but then she started getting ill again. She just lay there lifeless, she looked like she was dead.”

She was taken back to Medway Maritime Hospital and was then referred to King’s College Hospital in London.

Since September 2015 Alicia has had five iron transfusions and a liver scan but doctors are still puzzled by her illness.

Her parents are at their wits’ end and are hoping to raise £1,000 for private tests. Miss Wallington said: “This is pulling our family apart.

“Where we have to go to the hospital for appointments a lot we don’t have much time with our other two children.

“We’re hoping tests will give us a diagnosis so we can deal with it.”