A grandmother has raised more than £100,000 for Meningitis Research Foundation (MRF) after her baby granddaughter died of the disease five years ago.

Dawn Whiteman’s granddaughter, Maya Ford, died aged 21 months on August 2 in Darent Valley Hospital, Dartford. She was admitted just the day before with convulsions, a rash, a high temperature and an increased heart rate.

After Maya’s death, her parents, Louise Whiteman and Tony Ford, from Dartford, and Mrs Whiteman, from Crayford, decided to start raising money for the charity.

Mrs Whiteman said: “Our family were left heartbroken after Maya died. She was my world, my life, my everything and she was taken from us in just sixteen hours.”

Speaking to the News Shopper, she added: “The fundraising has made us carry on. I have to make something so wrong into something so right.”

Over the last five years, Mrs Whiteman has organised dozens of fundraising events in Maya’s memory including charity balls and horse shows at her riding club.

The most successful event was organised by her nephew, Paul, who planned a banger racing event in Essex, calling on people to bring their ‘old bangers’ to the dirt track.

By the end of the two-day gathering, Maya’s family had raised £35,000 for the Meningitis Research Foundation.

It was so popular it caused heavy traffic on the motorway as people came from all over to take part – some travelled from as far as Poland and Germany.

“Maya brought the M25 to a standstill that day. It was just unbelievable,” Mrs Whiteman said.

Maya’s Just Giving page total now stands at £171,996.45 - and her family has no plans to stop yet.

“We will keep going. We have got lots of things in the pipeline,” Mrs Whiteman said.

This year, in the first week of May, she will continue her annual tradition of ‘painting the town purple’. As a retail worker at Wellingtons Electrical in Northumberland Heath, her shop encourages other businesses on the high street to decorate their shopfronts in MRF’s colour.

As well as an impressive total, Mrs Whiteman also wants to raise awareness of the disease amongst parents.

She added: “We need all parents and health professionals to be on high alert to meningitis and septicaemia because there is no time to waste when a child is ill with this disease.

“If just one life can be saved thanks to our fundraising and awareness raising then it helps us live with our loss.”