Why does my life not mean anything?
That’s what Tafida would ask you, mum tells court
THE mother of a seriously ill schoolgirl told a judge yesterday that if her daughter could speak she would beg for a chance to survive.
Asked what five- year- old Tafida Raqeeb would say about plans to switch off her life- support, her mother Shelina Begum replied: ‘Does my life not mean anything to anyone?’
A blood vessel burst in Tafida’s head in February and Royal London Hospital doctors say she can no longer move, see or feel. They have asked for permission to withdraw treatment.
However, the schoolgirl’s parents, from Newham, east London, have been told by independent specialists she could make a partial recovery from the severe brain injury if given a year or more, and with rehabilitation could live another 20 years.
They want to take her to Italy, where the Gaslini children’s hospital in Genoa has offered to continue treating her.
Crying in the witness box, Miss Begum insisted her daughter is improving and responding to her family. Tafida’s construction consultant father Mohammed Raqeeb, 45, sat in the front row at the High Court, blinking back tears as his wife spoke for them both.
Miss Begum, 39, who the court heard knows Tafida ‘probably better than anyone’, was asked: ‘What would Tafida like to say to the judge, if she was watching proceedings?’
Miss Begum replied: ‘She would say: “My lord, doctors predicted I would not make it through surgery, and most likely I would die, and I didn’t. Then I had a cardiac arrest, and I came back to life again. I had a brain stem test, and was told I would die. I made it.” ’
Continuing to speak for her daughter, she said: ‘ “I have just been left, confined to bed. Not allowed to get up... What have I actually done wrong, that this is what is happening to me? Why am I not being given a chance? Does my life not mean anything to anyone? All I am asking you is, give me that chance. I want to continue to fight.” ’
Miss Begum has given up her job as a solicitor to keep a round-the-clock vigil at Tafida’s bedside. She told the court: ‘I have been with her throughout, day in, day out, for seven months, taking care of her, her personal care, washing her, changing her, helping the nurses change her sheets. How long do the doctors spend with Tafida? At the maximum, an hour, or ten minutes in the morning, ten minutes in the afternoon.
‘I sit with Tafida and see what she does. This morning, I said “I’m going to court”, and she pulled her head forward. The nurses saw it. I see these things every day.
‘Tafida actually knows my presence. I’m the one who spends the entire day there, and I’m the one who sees improvements every day.’ She rejected a suggestion that Tafida’s movements were ‘random’. The court was played videos appearing to show Tafida reaching out to touch a hand, after being encouraged: ‘Go on, take my hand.’
The family, who are devout Muslims, say it is against their faith to allow doctors to withdraw the artificial ventilator that is helping Tafida to breathe.
Katie Gollop QC, for the Royal London, told Miss Begum: ‘There are two Tafidas. A bubbly, bright, clever, bilingual, warmhearted four-year-old who was an essential part of her family... the hospital never had the fortune to meet that Tafida.
‘We cannot always have what we want. We must face facts.’
Miss Gollop said the doctors’ unanimous view was that continuing Tafida’s treatment would ‘do no more than suspend her in a state of animation without experience’. However, the court was told Tafida’s brain condition does not cause her any suffering.
The judge posed the idea that ‘it might be said that ten to 20 years of “unawareness” might be a price worth paying... whereas ten to 20 years of suffering might not be’. The case continues.