THE family of five-year-old cancer sufferer John Mark Riding are planning to fly to Germany on Monday to get him treatment which cannot be offered in England.

It means thousands of pounds raised by well wishers can now be put to use.

Supporters of the family in Blackburn, and in Redruth, Cornwall, where John Mark now lives, have raised thousands of pounds for the fund to pay for treatment at the specialist clinic in Bad Mergentheim near Stuttgart.

The clinic is offering drug treatment which will slow down the progress of the brain tumour from which John Mark is suffering. It will also provide physiotherapy for him as well as counselling.

There had been a question mark hanging over the trip until doctors gave John the go-ahead to travel and organisers of the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association (SSAFA) stepped in to help pay for flights to get the family to Germany.

John Mark finished a six-week course of radiotherapy in Bristol on Christmas Eve, but doctors told the family last week the tumour did not appear to have responded to the treatment.

The news meant that the outlook for him was bleak and he has already outlived by three weeks the three months doctors gave him to live.

His parents John Riding, from Blackburn, and Jacqueline Sanderson, have been searching for overseas treatments since then to give John a better chance.

Now they believe they have found one which could not only help his condition, but which does not have any side effects.

His father, John, said: "We have been told this can only do him good. We didn't want anything that might give side effects which would be bad for him.

"We have been told that he can manage the travelling, because it shouldn't be too long.

"The centre there is offering biological treatment. There won't be any heat treatment or chemotherapy.

"And they will be looking at the physical and psychological sides, too, which is good.

"His doctors here have said we should go because it can only be good for him, and for his mum and me, too."

Dr Wolfgang Woeppel, from the Stuttgart clinic, said: "The treatment we are offering for this kind of condition, with which we have been quite successful, is a non-specific treatment, which tries to change the metabolism around the tumour cell.

"We also try, experimentally, to change the tumour cell into a normal cell, and then activate the patient's immunity.

"Until I have seen the patient, I cannot say what the priority will be, but that is how we treat these tumours."