Father pleads for desperately ill daughter to be taken home to die

Abraham Fixsler's two-year-old, Alta, suffered a severe brain injury at birth and is having life support removed after a High Court decision in May

The father of a desperately ill toddler about to be taken off life support has pleaded with doctors to allow the child to be taken home to die.

Abraham Fixsler’s call came as the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) is removing medical help which keeps Alta alive.

The two-year-old suffered a severe brain injury when born prematurely and her doctors say she cannot breathe, eat or drink without sophisticated medical treatment.

In May, MFT won a High Court decision to have life support removed, arguing it was in Alta’s best interests. Lawyers representing the trust told the court that there is “no prospect of her ever getting better”.

Alta’s parents Avraham and Chaya, who are dual US-Israeli citizens, said their faith means they cannot agree to steps which would lead to her death.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4 on Monday, Abraham said he felt doctors and nurses were “going against me and against my wishes. And this is making it very difficult to go to visit Alta, to see her for a few hours and to sing to her and to talk to you her. You feel like a fool”.

“We choose we want to do to this in my house. Alta should be in our house for the last moments of her life” he said.

Saying he has doctors advising him from the US, he has advised once she is taken off life support, “it could take minutes, hours, days, weeks and even months” for her to die, “so it gives us the last wishes that we want to be with our child in our comfort zone and in our house.”

With life support set to be taken away this week, he father said it was a “big tragedy for the family” and for “all the Jewish communities living here in the UK”.

“There’s nothing else we can say. It’s going to be a very sad thing. And it’s going to be very hard for us. At least if this is going happen, at least they should let me take her home”.

He added it’s important because it would be “the point of feeling love. We want to be in our comfort zone, me and my wife and my other child. I don’t want to be in the hospital in that time.”