The Battle For Baby Charlie

The parents of a desperately ill infant have fought hard to give him a shot at life – but the courts have ruled against them.

- Nicide Wet

AT FIRST he seemed a perfectly healthy baby, a downy-haired newborn with all 10 fingers and toes and a cute button nose. But it was soon clear something was wrong with little Charlie.

He was listless and struggled to feed. His parents, British couple Chris Gard (30) and Connie Yates (31), never had the chance to take him home to the nursery they’d lovingly prepared – a crib full of teddy bears, a changing table stocked with nappies and a wardrobe full of carefully chosen baby clothes.

Charlie was eight weeks old when he was diagnosed with mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome (MDS) – a disease so rare he’s only the 16th person in the world to have been diagnosed with it.

Doctors gave him little hope of survival and soon Charlie was on life support – and so began his parents’ desperate battle to save their son, one they documented on Twitter under the banner Charlie’s Fight.

They had a glimmer of hope when they heard of potentially life-saving experimental treatment in America and managed to raise £1,4 million (about R23 million) via a GoFundMe website to help cover the cost.

But his doctors and the courts were against them – and the final nail in their coffin of hope came when the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in France ruled their son had to be taken off the ventilator. Any further treatment would expose Charlie (now 10 months old) to continual suffering and stress, they said, adding that the chance of the therapy being successful was negligible and it would just cause more harm.

Their decision resulted in a public outcry, with demonstrators protesting outside Buckingham Palace.

Even more unbearable was the fact that doctors at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital then denied Chris and Connie their final wish to take Charlie home to die.