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UK girl wins right-to-die bid against transplant

A teenage girl has won the right to refuse a potentially life-saving heart operation after health authorities agreed to drop legal action to force her to undergo treatment.

  • Reuters
  • Published: 23:54 November 11, 2008
  • Gulf News

London: A teenage girl has won the right to refuse a potentially life-saving heart operation after health authorities agreed to drop legal action to force her to undergo treatment.

Terminally ill Hannah Jones, 13, persuaded health officials in Herefordshire not to pursue a court order after she decided she wanted to spend her remaining time with her family rather than risk a heart transplant, newspapers reported yesterday.

"They explained everything to me but I just didn't want to go through any more operations," she told the Daily Mirror. "I'd had enough of hospitals and wanted to come home."

The young girl has spent much of the past eight years in hospital wards undergoing treatment for leukaemia and the crippling heart condition cardiomyopathy.

Her heart can only pump at 10 per cent of its capacity and Hannah has already had three operations to fit pacemakers.

Doctors said she would die within six months unless she had a transplant and warned Hannah's family they faced a court order if they refused to bring her back to hospital.

But they backed down after Hannah explained her case to health officials.

"Hannah must have done a good job of convincing them because after consulting lawyers they said no further action would be taken," her father Andrew, 43, told the Mirror.

Her mother Kirsty, 42, a former intensive care nurse, said if Hannah did have a transplant it was likely she would need another within five years.

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