It’s the end... our country has failed a 12-year-old child
Final court bid to save Archie fails
ARCHIE Battersbee’s family said their desperate fight to keep him alive had reached “the end” as the European Court of Human Rights refused to stop the 12-year-old’s life support being withdrawn.
Mum Hollie Dance and dad Paul Battersbee had made a last-ditch plea to the Strasbourg court hours before Barts Health NHS Trust was due to stop treatment yesterday morning.
Archie had been in a coma and kept alive by ventilation and drug treatments at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, East London, since he was found unconscious in April.
The ECHR last night said it “would not interfere” with UK courts’ rulings that life support should be withdrawn.
Heartbroken Hollie said outside hospital afterwards: “It’s the end. It was the last thing, wasn’t it? Again our country has failed a 12-year-old child.”
In a statement minutes earlier she had insisted the fight had not ended, saying: “This is another heartbreaking development in our fight for Archie’s right to live. The NHS, the Government and the courts in this country and Europe may have given up on treating him, but we have not.”
Telling how doctors in Japan and Italy had contacted the family offering treatment for Archie, she added: “Why can’t we give him a chance?”
In the statement released through Christian Concern she vowed to “fight to the end for Archie’s right to live”. Hollie found the aspiring gymnast with a ligature around his neck in April after what she believes was an online challenge gone wrong.
The schoolboy never regained consciousness and doctors believe he has no prospect of making a meaningful recovery from his catastrophic brain injury.
Experts said he was being kept alive by 17 different medical interventions including ventilation.
Hollie from Southend, Essex, said she wanted Archie to be moved to a hospice under a “worst-case scenario” but said the hospital had refused this.
The family’s plea to the ECHR came after the Supreme Court upheld the Court of Appeal’s decision to deny a “stay” for a UN committee to consider Archie’s case, concluding that ending life support was in his best interests.
The ECHR said it would not grant an interim measure to continue treatment. It said it would only grant such requests “on an exceptional basis” and “when the applicants would otherwise face a real risk of irreversible harm”.
Alistair Chesser, chief medical officer for Barts Health NHS Trust, said yesterday morning: “Our deepest sympathies remain with Archie’s family and we aim to provide the best possible support at this difficult time.”
The NHS, ministers and courts have given up on him
HOLLIE DANCE MOTHER OF ARCHIE BATTERSBEE