Archie Battersbee's mum has spoken tonight (Wednesday, August 3) about the failure of the latest legal bid to postpone the withdrawal of her son’s life support. Hollie Dance said "Why can’t we give him a chance?" after an application to the the European Court of Human Rights failed.
Ms Dance and Archie’s father Paul Battersbee applied to the Strasbourg-based court just a few hours before Barts Health NHS Trust had been expected to withdraw their son’s life support on Wednesday morning. The 12-year-old has been in a coma since he was found unconscious in April and is being kept alive by a combination of medical interventions, including ventilation and drug treatments, at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London.
But shortly after 6.30pm, the European court said it had refused the parents’ request, adding that it would not “interfere with the decisions of the national courts to allow the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment from (Archie) to proceed”.
