An online petition supported by the family requesting that Royal London Hospital allow Raqeeb to be transferred to Gaslini Children's Hospital insists that the child should remain on life support.
"Following extensive brain surgery at King's College hospital, doctors informed her parents that she was brain dead and to consider making preparations for her funeral," reads the petition.
"A brain stem test indicated that Tafida did not meet the qualification of 'brain death' as she made gasping movements and therefore could not be removed from the ventilator."
Since then, Raqeeb has remained on a ventilator at Royal London Hospital. According to the family, a neurologist has declared her to be in a "deep coma," from which she is beginning to emerge. Her parents say she is able to open her eyes and move her limbs, as well as being able to swallow and react to pain.
Begum has said that doctors initially proposed giving her a tracheostomy and allowing her to return home, to continue recovery.
"The medical team have now changed their mind and want to withdraw ventilation to end her life," Begum wrote as part of a separate online petition organized by the family.
Begum had said she wants to "exercise her rights as a parent."
Raqeeb's family is being represented by Yogi Amin, a human rights lawyer, who said that "The heartbroken family do not want to be caught in a situation where the state overrules the parents' good intentions to arrange [...] treatment in a hospital of their choosing for their disabled daughter."
He added that "There is no evidence that Tafida will be harmed during transit or abroad and her loving parents should have a legal right to elect to transfer their daughter to another hospital for private medical care."
Tafida's case follows similar campaigns by parents in the cases of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans, who were both terminally ill children in NHS care. In 2017, doctors sought to remove Charlie Gard from his ventilator, despite his parents' wishes to transfer him to a hospital in New York City. He died in hospice at the age of 11 months, after life support was removed.
Less than a year later, the parents of Alfie Evans also objected to NHS attempts to remove his ventilator, saying they wished to move him to a hospital in Italy. Evans' life support was eventually removed, and he survived for five days breathing on his own before dying just short of his second birthday.
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