THE response to an appeal to save a five-year-old child’s life is indeed amazing.

That was the word that mum Olivia Saxelby used to describe the generosity of people from Worcester and beyond who had flocked to raise money to save her son Oscar.

Oscar has leukaemia, which a previous stem-cell transplant has failed to cure.

Now the family has to hope that either another course of stem-cell therapy will work, or that a trial of a therapy called CAR-T, available in Singapore, will help Oscar.

But the NHS won’t pay up for such treatment, leaving the family having to find £500,000.

But the silver lining is that Oscar’s plight has prompted Worcester people to donate £53,000, more than a tenth of the target, in just three days.

Such a response is heart-warming in an age when we are bombarded with bad news from all parts of the world; it is so easy to forget that generosity and kindness are just as much parts of human nature as are hatred and cruelty.

Another example can be found in last weekend’s the Worcester City Half Marathon, 10K and Young Athletes Run, which between them attracted more than 4,000 participants; many of them were raising money for the Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust,. the charity that is supporting Oscar and his family.

And earlier this year, thousands of people gave up their own free time to attend Oscar’s school and register as stem cell donors in the hope of finding a successful match to help save his life.

But we tend not to hear about things like this in the mass media, preoccupied as they are with the latest political infighting, disasters such as the recent hurricane hitting the Bahamas, and meaningless celebrity gossip.

But these bright moments are still there; the people who took part and contributed know what they did and it is right to applaud what they have done to help others.

That is the true meaning of community spirit, and it will be fair to say that people of all backgrounds who take part in these events don’t do it to signal their virtue, but simply because they believe that it is the right thing to do.

This impulse is too often ignored, but it should not be: it should be celebrated.