The parents of Tafida Raqeeb, a seriously ill five-year-old have been granted permission to take their daughter to Italy for further treatment, despite London doctors arguing she should be allowed to die.
Raqeeb has been at Royal London Hospital’s paediatric intensive care unit for more than four months, where doctors treating her have said there is no chance of recovery following a sudden traumatic brain injury earlier this year.
Officials at Barts Health NHS Trust, which runs the Whitechapel hospital, have maintained that stopping “life-sustaining treatment” is in the youngster’s best interests.
However, Raqeeb’s mother, solicitor Shelina Begum, and father Mohammed Raqeeb, a construction consultant, have been fighting to take her to Gaslini children’s hospital in Genoa, Italy for further treatment – and on Thursday were granted permission by High Court judges.