A U.K. judge has set a date and time for when a 23-month-old toddler will be taken off life support.
The toddler, Alfie Evans, has been receiving treatment since December 2016 for an undiagnosed degenerative brain disease. Doctors at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool have said treatment is “futile” and they would stop treating the boy.
In February, Evans’ parents, Tom Evans and Kate James, appealed the doctors’ decision to stop treatment. The Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights, however, did not reverse the decision.
This week, High Court judge Justice Hayden decided on a date and time for when life support will be stopped. Those details cannot be released due to legal reasons.
In his decision, Hayden said it was “profoundly unfair” what happened to Alfie, but doctors now could only offer “good quality palliative care.”
The judge’s decision came just one day after Tom Evans wrote on the Alfies Army Official Facebook page that he was worried about the then-pending decision.
"Tomorrow could be the day (he) is executed as you can see on the vent he can clearly breathe when he wants to as well as cough, sneeze, yawn, stretch, swallow, spit etc.,” he wrote.
"Alder Hey want to take this life from us, from him."
Evans said the toddler was having frequent seizures and had a collapsed lung and urine infection.
"His features haven't changed, he hasn't stopped growing, he responds to as much as he can, he fights through seizures without any effect taking to him," he wrote.
"As I have said all along our son is not dying why should this have to happen to him?"
Last week, Pope Francis took to Twitter to offer support for the boy, saying he was praying for the family.
“It is my sincere hope that everything necessary may be done in order to continue compassionately accompanying little Alfie Evans, and that the deep suffering of his parents may be heard," Francis wrote on Twitter last week.
Photo courtesy: Facebook/Save Alfie Evans
Publication date: April 12, 2018
