Judicial Review Granted For Parents Seeking Permission To Take Daughter To Italy For Treatment

The High Court today (22 July 2019) granted permission for a judicial review on the case of five-year-old girl Tafida Raqeeb who is in a coma. UK doctors recommended her life support was switched off. Legal action has been taken on Tafida’s behalf for her to be released from her London hospital in order to allow her family to take her, with an expert clinical team, to Italy for care. The five day hearing will take place in September on a date to be confirmed.

Staff at Royal London Hospital say there is no hope Tafida Raqeeb will recover from a traumatic brain injury she suffered in February this year but her parents want to take her to a hospital in Genoa, Italy, which has the expertise to care for her and confirmed it is willing to continue her care.

Specialist human rights lawyers at Irwin Mitchell have been instructed to act for Tafida to lead the legal challenge in the High Court. The case will consider whether the hospital will be given a legal right to detain a child and prevent parents from transferring their child to private medical care abroad.

Expert Opinion

“The heartbroken family do not want to be caught in a situation where the state overrules the parents’ good intentions to arrange hospital treatment in a hospital of their choosing for their disabled daughter. There is no evidence that Tafida will be harmed during transit or abroad and her loving parents should have a legal right to elect to transfer their daughter to another hospital for private medical care.” Yogi Amin - Partner and National Head of Public Law and Human Rights

Tafida was apparently completely healthy before a brain trauma on 9 February She suffers from a rare condition which causes a tangle of blood vessels with abnormal connections between the arteries and veins and suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result.

Last week doctors in Italy confirmed that Tafida would not be subject to withdrawal from life support in their hospital, in her current condition.