JUDGE GIVES TAFIDA THE CHANCE TO LIVE

Dramatic ruling ‘shows parents know best’ – and means sick girl can go to Italy for treatment

A SICK little girl was given a chance of life yesterday in a landmark ruling that hailed parents’ rights.

A judge stunned NHS doctors by blocking their bid to switch off schoolgirl Tafida Raqeeb’s life support.

The five- year- old’s mother Shelina Begum, 39, sobbed and said ‘we won, we won, we won’ following the shock verdict at the High Court. Then she ran into the arms of her family and hugged her tearful husband Mohammed Raqeeb, 45.

The couple’s lawyer hailed the legal victory as establishing that parents know best as to what care is right for their child.

Medical and legal experts said the ruling could encourage more parents of desperately ill children to fight against doctors who think it is kinder to let them die.

Last night the parents of brain-damaged Tafida began preparations to transfer her within ten days to a hospital in Genoa, Italy, which has agreed to care for her.

Tafida was a previously healthy four-yearold in reception class when she suffered a burst blood vessel in her head in February.

Royal London Hospital doctors say she can no longer move, see or feel. They said she had no prospect of getting better and that it would be kinder to let her die.

They asked the High Court in London to sanction the removal of tubes that help her breathe. Tafida’s mother, a solicitor, took the witness stand and pleaded with the judge to spare her daughter. Unlike in the similar tragic cases of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans, the judge yesterday came down firmly on the side of Tafida’s jubilant family, to gasps from the public gallery.

Tafida’s parents have fought tirelessly for their daughter to be given more time to recover from her coma.

The Royal London Hospital in East London was left reeling, with its QC telling the court it was ‘grappling’ with the enormity of the decision.

The hospital will return to court today to announce whether it will try to appeal the judgment – potentially prolonging the agony for Tafida’s parents.

But yesterday the family welcomed Mr Justice MacDonald’s ruling as striking a blow for parents of sick children who battle against hospitals over who is bestplaced to decide what is in a child’s best interests.

Their QC David Lock praised the judge for ruling that ‘decisions for medical treatment belong to the parents in the first instance’.

In his ruling, Mr Justice MacDonald noted how the devoted parents had rarely left their daughter’s bedside in eight months, and suggested the case was one in which it was right that difficult decisions ‘will be taken by a parent in the exercise of their parental responsibility’. Outside court, Miss Begum said she was ‘relieved beyond words’ at her family’s victory.

The couple had to hear an independent guardian – appointed by the court to represent Tafida’s interests – agreeing with doctors that she was better off dead.

Miss Begum said: ‘The entire experience of having to fight for our daughter’s life over the last three months has been exhausting and traumatic for all of her family and we are glad it is now finally over. It is vital for Tafida that she is removed from the Royal London Hospital and transferred to the Gaslini Children’s Hospital in Genoa, Italy, at the earliest opportunity.’

She thanked the judge, adding: ‘Justice has been served.’

In a five-day hearing last month, the court heard that Tafida was in a ‘minimally aware’ state but was not suffering pain and could potentially live for another 20 years.

Her parents have been told by independent specialists she could make a partial recovery from the severe brain injury if given a year or more. But the London hospital argued the schoolgirl had ‘no prospect of recovery’.

Yesterday the judge ruled that where a child was not suffering, one of the overriding factors to consider was ‘the meaning of life and the principle of the sanctity of life’. Mr Justice MacDonald said a ‘further benefit’ of keeping Tafida alive was that it accorded with the Islamic faith in which she was being raised by her family, who are from Newham, East London.

Solicitor Paul Conrathe, of Sinclairslaw, who represented the parents, said: ‘This judgment recognised that a child’s best interests are not merely medical, but include broader social and religious values.’ But experts said the case has wider implications.

Dominic Wilkinson, consultant neonatologist and professor of medical ethics at Oxford University, said: ‘Health professionals and those working in intensive care in the UK may worry that this decision will lead to more conflict or make it more likely that disagreements will end up in the court.’

‘Justice has been served’