A severely disabled five-year-old girl whose parents won a High Court battle to move her abroad to continue her life-support treatment has arrived in Italy.
A judge ruled earlier this month that Tafida Raqeeb could be moved from the Royal London Hospital to the Gaslini children’s hospital in Genoa.
The youngster was taken by chartered plane from the UK on Tuesday, arriving at Genoa Airport as darkness fell.
Her mother Shelina Begum hugged someone as the ambulance was readied, and her father Mohammed Raqeeb appeared deep in thought.
Two police cars sounded their sirens as they led the ambulance to the hospital with their blue lights flashing.
Tafida’s parents, of Newham, east London, had said life-support treatment should continue.
They also said they should be allowed to move their daughter to a hospital of their choice.
Bosses at the London hospital where Tafida was being treated disagreed.
Mr Justice MacDonald ruled in favour of Tafida’s parents after analysing evidence at a High Court trial in London.
Tafida’s parents said they thought that she had a “quality of life”.
They said they wanted to take Tafida to a country where she would keep getting life-support treatment and where doctors’ views on quality of life were in line with their own.
Lawyers representing Royal London Hospital bosses told Mr Justice MacDonald that blood vessels in Tafida’s brain were “tangled up”.
The judge was told that all doctors asked for an opinion, including Italian medics and a specialist at Great Ormond Street in London, agreed that Tafida would never come off a ventilator and would always need artificial assistance.
He heard how specialist doctors thought Tafida was “beyond experience”.
