A LITTLE girl with a life-threatening condition defied all the odds at a sponsored swim in Oxford.

Gulshat Kadyrova, known as Lily, was born without hip sockets in her home country of Turkmenistan in Central Asia.

She and mother Bahar travelled across the world to Oxford in 2006 for a specialist hip operation at the Nuffield Orthopeadic Centre.

And thanks to Oxford Mail readers, more than £15,000 was raised for the operation. But doctors soon discovered she also had scoliosis – a curvature of the spine – which could prove fatal if it is not corrected.

Friends and charity workers now need to raise more than £35,000 for a new operation for when Gulshat is around 13, to fuse some of her vertebrae.

They have already raised more than £15,000 with a host of fundraising activities, and this month added a bit more in a sponsored swim.

Teachers said Lily, now 11 and living in Cumnor, would be able to do between four and eight lengths, but she managed an impressive 37 lengths at the Oxford Brookes pool.

Money is still being collected.

Her mum said: “She is so determined and although she hit her head a few days before, she said she wanted to do it.”