Healthcare providers in the United Kingdom’s socialist medical system have sought to block a seriously ill teenage girl from extending her life-saving care, prevented her from seeking treatment abroad, and even used a court order to block her from speaking publicly to fundraise to save her life, it is claimed.
Speaking for the first time — although anonymously after doctors obtained a court order to prevent her from using her name — a defiant 19-year-old girl has condemned the socialist National Health Service (NHS) for seeking to “condemn” her to death as she battles with a rare illness, a national newspaper claims.
“By the time you read this, I could be dead. That’s according to my doctors who, for the last year, have repeatedly told me that I have had only days to live. But I am a fighter and will continue to fight,” the girl, only referred to as ‘ST’, told the Daily Mail.
“They’ve done everything they can to stop me telling this story,” ST continued. “I have found myself trapped in a medical and legal system governed by a toxic paternalism which has condemned me for wanting to live.”
The teen suffers from a genetic disorder known as mitochondrial depletion syndrome (MDS) which limits the functions of a person’s cellular processes and was exacerbated last year after she contracted the Chinese coronavirus.
Although she has outlived predictions from her doctors, the NHS has determined that she is “actively dying” and therefore should not have her care continued, it is claimed. The report states the teenager has vowed to appeal the decision from a court which was persuaded by the healthcare system that she was “delusional” for seeking to extend her life given the prognostications of her doctors, despite the disease not affecting her mind.
ST has also been prevented from travelling to Canada to join clinical trials for nucleoside therapy, an experimental treatment that hopes to restore mitochondrial functions, it is said. Even if the novel treatment is not successful in curing her outright, the 19-year-old and her parents hope that it may extend her life.
“My doctors are saying because they cannot treat my MDS, I should not be having any more life-preserving treatment. Instead, I should be filled up with opioids so I will lose consciousness and die. I do not want this and want to try the treatment being offered abroad. It might be a small chance, but it is my only chance,” she said.
To add insult to injury, her doctors allegedly petitioned a court to prevent her from speaking publicly under her own name, thereby preventing ST and her family from turning to the public to fundraise the £1.5 million needed to be transported to a hospital in Canada or America, three of which have already offered to treat her.
Yet, she said: “Because of the court proceedings I am blocked from going [to North America] and because of the gagging orders I cannot fundraise to finance my treatment and transport.”
Her family, which has already spent £25,000 from their life savings and selling off family heirlooms to fund their legal case against the NHS, said: “We cannot give up, especially after seeing the grit and determination from our daughter’s end for more than a year in (the Intensive Therapy Unit)… No one, including the doctors, understand the complex nature of this disease.”
The condition that ST suffers from is the same illness that befell young Charlie Gard, a baby whose life support was removed by the NHS in 2017 after a lengthy court battle in which his parents begged for the opportunity to travel abroad to seek medical treatments for their ailing child.
“ST closely followed the case of Charlie Gard because it resonates with her exact condition,” her mother said. “As a young, brave and vocal teenager, she believes she’s fighting for not just herself, but people like Charlie Gard. She believes he could have been saved if nucleoside treatment was given [to him] at the right time.”
Speaking — with difficulty due to having a tracheotomy — ST said that there is an urgent need for the socialised healthcare system in Britain to be reformed so that others are not subjected to the same ‘treatment’ as she and her family have suffered over the last year.
“I am in a race against time to escape from this system and the certain death it wishes to impose on me,” she said. “But I am a fighter and will continue to fight. I trust in God and will not give up hope.”