Drama about terminally ill baby: life support measures for little Indi ended

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After months of fruitless court battle, British doctors have stopped all life support measures for a terminally ill baby. Indi Gregory was transferred by ambulance and under a security escort from the hospital in the English city of Nottingham to a hospice for the dying on Saturday evening, the evangelical movement Christian Concern announced on Sunday. Her parents are by their eight-month-old daughter’s side.

Indi Gregory suffers from a serious and incurable mitochondrial disease, a genetic defect in the mitochondria that prevents the body’s cells from producing energy. According to the doctors, further treatment would be painful and useless.

Help from Meloni didn’t help

Indi’s parents, Claire Staniforth and Dean Gregory, fought the doctors’ decision for months. They initially wanted to have the baby transferred to the Vatican’s Bambino Gesù Hospital in Rome for treatment and received last-minute support from ultra-right government head Giorgia Meloni, 46, who granted the baby Italian citizenship. However, a British court ultimately rejected the application on Wednesday.

On Friday, the second highest court of appeal rejected the parents’ request to have Indi’s life-prolonging measures stopped at home. It thus confirmed the assessment of lower authorities that stopping care outside a medical institution was “too dangerous”.

Christian Concern quoted Indi’s father as saying the little one has “fought hard” since the end-of-life measures were put in place. She stopped breathing briefly last night, “but then started again.” (AFP)

Source: Blick