Archie Battersbee's mum has said she will 'fight' to get her son moved into a hospice after the European Court of Human Rights decided not to intervene in the decision to withdraw life-support treatment.
Archie, 12, has been in a coma since he was found unconscious in April and is being kept alive by medical interventions at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London.
Speaking outside The Royal London Hospital, Hollie Dance said: “We’ve now got a fight to see whether we can get him out of here to have a dignified passing at a hospice. It’s just unfair.
“Now I would like him out of this hospital. He came to this hospital to have an operation, this hospital failed him.
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“So, I would like him out of here as quick as possible really. And in a peaceful hospice to say goodbye and spend time with his family, uninterrupted by the noise and chaos.”
Hollie also suggested the legal battle to stop her 12-year-old son's life support being withdrawn was now over.
After being asked whether this defeat felt different, she said: “It’s the end, it was the last thing, wasn’t it, and again our country have failed a 12-year-old child.”
Hollie added that she 'won’t allow' anything to be done before his father returns to his bedside at the hospital.
She said: “He’s coming back again in the morning.
“So, they definitely won’t be doing anything until tomorrow because I definitely won’t allow that. So, yeah, we’ve got to wait for everybody to come back up again now.”
His parents, Hollie Dance and Paul Battersbee, submitted the application to the Strasbourg-based court just hours before Barts Health NHS Trust was initially expected to withdraw Archie’s life support.
In a statement, the European Court of Human Rights said it 'would not interfere' with the decisions of UK courts that life-support treatment should be withdrawn from Archie.
The court said it would not grant an interim measure to continue treatment and declared the parents’ complaints 'inadmissible'.
The statement added the court would only grant such requests 'on an exceptional basis' and 'when the applicants would otherwise face a real risk of irreversible harm'.
Mason Jones