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The UK parents of a terminally ill toddler are fighting tooth and nail to keep their baby alive.
This after a court decided on the date and time for the boy’s life support to be switched off, Mirror UK reports.
Alfie Evans (2) is in a "semi-vegetative state" and has been in a coma for over a year, due to a mystery illness doctors have been unable to diagnose.
On Wednesday a UK high court judge endorsed an end-of-life care plan, according to The Guardian – which Aflie’s parents, Tom Evans and Kate James, passionately disagree with.
Supporters of the terminally ill toddler’s parents rallied outside Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool to “save Alfie” on Thursday night.
This after police reportedly barred the parents from leaving the hospital with Alfie based on the letter from Christian Legal Centre that apparently grants them permission to remove him.
It is understood Tom and Kate plan to take their son to the Vatican-linked Bambino Gesu Paediatric Hospital in Rome for possible treatment, after they received backing from Pope Francis, reports Daily Mail.
In a heart-wrenching video recorded inside his son’s ward, Tom pleaded with the community to hold “quiet” protests outside the hospital.
“Look at my healthy, healthy child, who’s undiagnosed and certainly not dying,” he showed Alfie lying on his sick bed.
He said a plane was waiting for him at the airport.
Alfie suffers from an undiagnosed degenerative brain disease and his brain is “almost entirely water”.
The little boy has been hospitalised since December 2016, dealing with chronic seizures and is being kept alive by a ventilator.
The court ruled that Alfie’s condition is “irreversible and untreatable and that continued active treatment is not in his best interests”, Daily Record reported.
However, his parents believe that their son is doing well as he was responding to his father’s touch, gripping his parents’ fingers and “repeating baby sucking reflexes”.
They are adamant that their son is not dying.
“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,” Tom wrote on social media.
The judge has criticised Tom for sharing videos of his son online and called it “intrusive of his privacy”.
“What Tom Evans sees, genuinely sees, is not the same as what others might see on those videos and on the fullness of time he may come to regret it,” the judge said.
According to Alfie’s Facebook official page, parents, lawyers and hospital are currently in mediation.
The issue has even caught the attention of the Pope, who tweeted: “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.”
"I am praying for Alfie, for his family and for all who are involved.”
Sources: The Guardian, Mirror UK, Facebook, Daily Record, Daily Mail
