A HAMPSHIRE couple are to launch an emotional plea to the government next week to help give their young son a lifeline.

Tanya and Neil Carroll are to travel to London to ask for help from MPs to save their son's life.

The couple from Rownhams are joining 100 other parents from across the UK, to demonstrate outside 10 Downing Street on Tuesday for more funding into research of the fatal muscle wasting disease, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

The couple's five-year-old son Lloyd was diagnosed with DMD last July and since then the family has been coming to terms with the knowledge he will be a crippled teenager who could die before the age of 20.

Speaking to the Daily Echo ahead of next week's Race Against Time protest, Tanya and Neil of Horns Drove, said finding out their only child could die so young was devastating.

Tanya, 37, said: "There's no words that can express how it feels to look at your child and know that in seven or eight years he could be in a wheelchair."

"We all just want our children to survive, and with the extra funding we believe there's every chance of stopping the disease affecting future boys and giving them a longer life span of at least 40 to 50 years."

She added: "Lloyd is such a happy boy and we are just very positive people who take each day as it comes. We believe something good can be achieved."

Neil, 40, a project manager for O2, added: "It changes your whole perspective on things and makes you just look at life differently."

Joining the protest is Romsey MP Sandra Gidley.

"I am looking forward to meeting the Carroll family next week," she said.

"Together with other families descending on Parliament, we will lobby the government to provide more funding for research into muscular dystrophy. Increased investment in research would almost certainly improve and possibly save the lives of many suffers as well as realising savings for the NHS in terms of health and social care costs."

Parent Project UK is one of the charities organising the Race Against Time lobby and is run by people affected by the condition.

PPUK national organiser Nick Catlin whose five-year-old son Saul has the disease, said the government has to do more. We're all going outside Number 10 with our banners to call on the government to save our children's lives."

Mr Catlin said last year the Department of Health gave scientists £1.6m for the first ever funded research into the disease. "Now at least £5m more is needed to get for the research to bear fruit," he said.