AN RAF airman has been given the green light to deploy to Afghanistan just months after being diagnosed with heart problems.

Sgt Alex Ford discovered the condition during routine training when medics told him his left ventricle was contracting later than his right – a condition called Left Bundle Branch Block which can sometimes require a pacemaker.

But following a nervous wait and strict training regime, Sgt Ford, 38, has been told he can leave his desk job at RAF Benson and head out to the war-torn country.

Last night the avionics technician spoke of his excitement about making his first trip to Afghanistan.

He said: “I now just want to get on with the deployment. I’ve got five months of training to go through yet and I just want to get out there.

“I know the training will be important so that I can get out there, but you get to the stage where you just want to get on with it.”

Father-of-three Sgt Ford, based at Benson for two years, will deploy as part of the Military Stabilisation Support Group to help foster development in areas of combat.

He will be working on reconstruction projects and liaising with local Afghans.

Sgt Ford believes he has had the ventricular problem since childhood and said he was determined to prove medics wrong.

He added: “The medics said I’ve had a heart problem, but I didn’t think I did.

“I still have high blood pressure, but when I was training I knew that I could go running and train very hard down the gym, so I knew there was nothing wrong with the heart.

“But it was trying to get that across to the medics.

“When I got the all-clear from them it was ‘I told you so’.”

He added: “My health problems have not really made me any more wary or excited about deployment.

“You’re always thinking about whether your knees or back are up to it.

“You can give in to these things or you can face up to them.”

Sgt Ford admits it will be hard to leave his family behind.

He said: “It’s going to be difficult, because I’ve got two families. I have almost grown-up children from a previous relationship that are around 100 miles away.

“Then I have my partner and young daughter.

“There’s going off and possibly being incommunicado for days at a time.”

Last month Sgt Ford spent the day ‘tweeting’ in the style of a 1940s airman to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.

He launched his Twitter page earlier this year after being given permission by Ministry of Defence chiefs.

Charting the daily routine of life on an RAF base, the page already has more than 2,000 followers, including Pub Landlord Al Murray.