In a few weeks' time the High Court will hear an application from the parents of Tafida Raqeeb, a five-year-old Muslim girl in a semi-comatose state following a brain injury in February, to allow them to take their daughter for treatment in Italy.
The Royal London Hospital, where the girl is being treated, opposes the move and says that being allowed to die is in Tafida’s “best interests” – the euphemism employed by the media to describe the withdrawal of her life support and feeding tubes.
Tafida’s case bears similarities to that of Charlie Gard, who died in a London hospice in 2017 after his parents were refused permission to take him from the Great Ormond Street Hospital to the United States for experimental treatment. It also has elements in common with the case of Alfie Evans, who died in Liverpool last year after his parents lost a court battle to fly him to a Vatican-owned hospital for treatment.
