By Melissa Jackson BBC News Online health staff

Hannah was nine when she had a transplant

Seventeen-year-old Hannah Swift is one of 600 children and adults taking part in the annual British Transplant Games in Norwich this weekend.

Competitors are keen to show that they should not be written off after major surgery.

The games' organisers hope to highlight the need for more people to come forward as organ donors.

They also want to encourage people with a potentially fatal disease to live life to the full.

Athletes will take part in events such as high jump, long jump, mini marathon and table tennis.

Hannah from Helmsley in North Yorkshire, needed a heart transplant at the age of nine, when she developed cardiomyopathy - a serious disease in which the heart muscle becomes inflamed and do not work properly.

My transplant has given me a second chance at life and I hope that the same can be done for others Hannah Swift, transplant athlete

Two months before the transplant, she started to get stomach pains and could not keep down her food.

She said: "I would get up in the morning and start to feel really ill by about 8.45.

"Just after leaving the house for school I would feel really ill.

"After about a month of this, I couldn't breathe properly and used to get indigestion pains.

"I was taken to hospital and they found out my kidneys were failing.

"My heart wasn't working properly and as a consequence, my other organs were packing up."

Swift operation

Hannah's condition deteriorated rapidly and she was moved to an intensive care bed at a hospital in Leeds.

She said: "I woke up at a hospital in Newcastle.

"I had no idea I'd had a transplant."

The competition is open to children and adults

Within hours a heart became available and she was moved to Newcastle for the transplant to take place.

It was within months of having the transplant that she first competed in the games, which have been an annual event since their inception in 1978.

She won several gold medals in the swimming event over the years until she got cancer of the lymph glands at the age of 14 and the treatment prevented her from jumping in the pool.

She had a six-month course of chemotherapy, which took its toll, but she bounced back again to take part in the games the following year and has participated in every other contest since.

She said: "Everyone says I'm really brave, but I think if anyone else had had it they would just get on with it.

"I'm a stronger person for having had the heart problem and cancer and I just take every day as it comes now."

She has more than 40 medals representing her triumphs at both the British and the world transplant games.

This year she is taking part in four events, badminton, the obstacle course, ball throwing and 10-pin bowling and has hopes of adding more medals to her collection.

Her training schedule is a little unstructured - she plays the odd game of badminton with her mum or older sister and practises against her sister in "friendly" 10-pin bowling matches about once a week.

She says she cannot train for ball throwing and the obstacle course, "you just hope for the best on the day".

Organ appeal

Winning medals is important, but there is also a strong social element to the games and she looks forward to meeting up with the friends she has made over the years.

She may never have made these friends were it not for the generosity of organ donors, but they are a scarce commodity.

More than 5,500 people in the UK are currently on transplant waiting lists and this figure is set to rise due to an ageing population, an increase in kidney failure and scientific advances meaning more people being suitable for a transplant.

Hannah is appealing for more people to register to carry donor cards.

She said: "My transplant has given me a second chance at life and I hope that the same can be done for others.

"But a lot of people who need organs don't get them .

"You can't take your organs to heaven, so why not leave them behind for others?"

Medical director of the Cardiomyopathy Association Robert Hall said: "The Transplant Games are a fantastic way of illustrating the benefit which can result from transplant therapy.

"Many of those taking part, on a yearly basis, would not have survived without their organ transplant.

"In the UK, there remains a shortage of donor organs.

"Figures from UK Transplant reveal that a significant number of people died in the last year while waiting for a suitable organ to become available.

"Whilst many advances have been made in treating conditions like dilated cardiomyopathy with conventional drug therapies there are still those whose only treatment option is a heart transplant.

"The Transplant Games show what can be achieved by people registering to carry a donor card."