Family of brain-damaged child win right-to-life battle

Five-year-old Tafida Raqeeb will be moved from the UK for continued treatment in Italy

A judge at the Royal Courts of Justice in London decided that Tafida Raqeeb could move to Italy. i-Images

The family of a young Muslim child with permanent brain damage have won a court battle to continue her care abroad despite UK doctors arguing that further treatment was futile.

The parents of Tafida Raqeeb, five, hope to move her to an Italian hospital within ten days after a judge ruled that she should be kept alive despite her catastrophic brain injuries that have kept her on a life-support machine.

Her lawyers had argued that further treatment was worthwhile because the child could live another 20 years even though she showed minimal awareness of what was going on around her.

The girl, from a British-Bangladeshi background, woke her parents in the early hours of February complaining of a headache. She collapsed shortly afterwards and stopped breathing. It emerged that blood vessels in her brain had ruptured, leaving her with irreversible damage.

After doctors sought permission to take her off life support, London-based parents Mohammed Raqeeb and Shelina Begum sought a move to Gaslini children’s hospital in Genoa, Italy, for continuing care.

They had argued in court that Islamic law only allowed God to end life, while officials at the Royal London Hospital had said that ending treatment was in the child’s best interests. The child had no vision and barely reacted to pain, doctors found.

After the ruling, the girl’s mother Shelina Begum said that having to fight for their daughter’s right to life had been “exhausting and traumatic” and the family were hopeful of some sort of recovery if given time.

“Our beautiful daughter Tafida is not dying but we are continuously seeing small but important signs that she is gradually improving,” she said.

Lawyers for the trust said they were considering an appeal which could delay her move to Italy.

In his 70-page ruling, the judge said that the “march of medical innovation” would continue to bring morally complex cases to the courts with doctors able to keep profoundly damaged people alive for years.

Mr Justice Macdonald said the case had raised difficult moral questions that “mean different things to different people in a diverse, multicultural, multifaith society”.

The case is just the latest in the UK involving parents seeking continued treatment abroad for their terminally or profoundly ill children.

The parents of Charlie Gard fought an unsuccessful five-month case in 2017 for treatment in the United States for a rare genetic disease. Both Donald Trump and Pope Francis had offered to help the sick child but his condition worsened during the course of the court case and he died in the UK.