London - A hospital is holding a seriously ill girl of five ‘against her will’, the High Court heard yesterday.
Tafida Raqeeb’s anguished parents want to remove her from the Royal London Hospital, where doctors believe it is in her best interests to die.
The family want to take her instead to an Italian hospital that is offering to care for the youngster, who has a rare brain injury, in the hope that she may recover.
But the Royal London is refusing to allow her to be transferred, saying Tafida is beyond hope and it would be kinder to switch off her life support.
In a day of drama at the High Court on Tuesday, the hospital and the family launched cases against each other. The hospital asked one judge to endorse doctors if they decided to withdraw treatment from Tafida if her condition worsened. Simultaneously, her family lodged a judicial review with another judge, demanding the hospital let them take their daughter.
Their barrister Jason Coppel QC told Mrs Justice Farbey: ‘Her confinement is against her will, as expressed by her parents who are the sole people who currently have the legal right to make decisions for her.’
He said Tafida ‘has been kept in the Royal London Hospital already for several days in the face of a request for her to leave’.
Tafida was struck down in her sleep on February 9 when a blood vessel in her brain burst. She is on an artificial ventilator in the Royal London. Her parents, from Newham, east London, are clinging to an independent doctor’s assessment that she is in a coma and could recover. The hospital says she cannot.
Tafida’s father, construction consultant Mohammed Raqeeb, 45, kept a vigil at his daughter’s bedside yesterday while her mother, Shelina Begum, a 39-year-old solicitor, went to court.
In the High Court, the family’s judicial review application argued that the Royal London was wrong to stop her being taken elsewhere.
The court was told that respected doctors at Gaslini Hospital in Genoa, Italy, were ‘willing and able to care for Tafida’, and that under Italian law she would ‘not satisfy the conditions of brain death, and so would not be a subject for the active withdrawal of care’.
The Italians would also transport her ‘safely’ by giving her full intensive care treatment en route. The family would pay privately.
It comes two years after the parents of Charlie Gard fought a court battle to take him to the US for treatment for a rare genetic condition. In the Family Court, Miss Begum represented herself as Barts Health NHS Trust, which runs the Royal London, made an emergency application to be allowed to withdraw treatment from her daughter, should her condition worsen in the next few days. Mr Justice MacDonald threw out the application, saying all the issues should be aired in a fresh court hearing next Monday. He said he wanted Tafida’s family to have a chance to instruct a solicitor to represent them. The judge also said the separate cases should be joined together, adding: ‘They are essentially, at their very heart, about the same thing.’
Last night Miss Begum said: ‘I just want to take my child out. We are still hopeful that they will see sense.’ The NHS Trust said: ‘This is a very sad case, for which we are in close contact with the family to offer support.’
© Daily Mail