The parents of a five-year-old girl with a serious brain injury have won a high court battle to take her to Italy for treatment after UK doctors said her life support should be withdrawn.
Tafida Raqeeb, from Newham in east London, has been in hospital since February after sustaining a brain injury. Doctors at the Royal London hospital, where she is on ventilation, say she has no awareness or prospect of recovering and it is not in her interests to continue treatment.
But her parents, Shelina Begum, 39, and Mohammed Raqeeb, 45, challenged that prognosis during a week-long hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in which they pleaded for the chance to take her to the Gaslini children’s hospital in Genoa.
On Tuesday, the judge, Alastair MacDonald QC, ruled in favour of her parents and against Barts health NHS trust, which runs Royal London hospital.
During the trial the court heard that switching off the life support of Tafida, who could live for up to 20 years on ventilation, ran counter to her religious beliefs and those of her parents. They have now won permission to take her to the Gaslini so that doctors there can perform a tracheotomy, enabling her to return home and be ventilated there.
Rejecting the doctors’ prognosis, Begum, an immigration lawyer, said her daughter had shown signs of awareness, producing videos shown to the court that she claimed illustrated this.
Katie Gollop QC, acting for Barts, said Tafida could not see, feel, taste or move and in the future was predicted to develop a number of conditions. They include spasticity, spinal curvature, dislocation of the hips, double incontinence and potentially epilepsy.
But Begum, who said there had been a breakdown of trust with the Royal London, said she remained hopeful that her daughter’s condition would improve, pleading for her to be given time. She said that if Tafida’s functions did not return, she would “still cherish her life the way it is”.
Tafida is not believed to be experiencing pain, but Begum said if she were to in future, the family would consult religious scholars for advice. Begum previously obtained a fatwa – a ruling in Islamic law – from the Islamic Council of Europe that concluded it would be a “great sin” and “absolutely impermissible” for the parents or anyone else to consent to the removal of life support.
