Doctors have suspended life-saving treatment for Indi Gregory, a British baby with an incurable disease who is at the centre of a war between her parents and the hospital, the Christian Concern group, which supports the couple.
The 8-month-old’s appeal “was suspended following the appeal court’s ruling on Friday,” Christian Concern said in a statement.
The girl’s parents had been fighting for months against British doctors, who advised suspending the remedy to keep their baby, who suffered from an incurable mitochondrial disease, alive.
Doctors at Nottingham Hospital, where the woman was being treated, argued that further treatment was unnecessary and painful, a position opposed by Dean Gregory and Claire Staniforth.
On Friday, the court ruled that the remedy should be detained at a medical facility, not at the parents’ home, as they had requested.
“Indi was transported from the hospital by ambulance with a security escort” to a “hospice,” according to Christian Concern, which added that “last night she stopped breathing and then started again. “
The case took a diplomatic turn with the direct intervention of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose far-right party promotes classic Catholic family values, to grant the boy Italian citizenship.
But on Wednesday, an English high court ruled that Rome’s intervention did not supersede any of the past decisions.
There is no cure for mitochondrial diseases, which are genetic and prevent the body’s cells from generating energy.
On Saturday, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, whose hospital had shown up to continue treating the baby, said Pope Francis “embraces little Indi Gregory’s circle of relatives, her father and mother, prays for them and for her, and directs his mind to all the children. ” who, in those same hours, all over the world, live in pain or risk their lives because of disease and war.