Family

Background

The third respondent, presently aged 11 months, suffered acute brain injury following severe hypoxia during labour and delivery. He was admitted to the paediatric intensive care ward of the applicant hospital. The hospital applied for declarations that the provision of life-sustaining treatment was no longer in his best interests. The child’s parents opposed the application.

Application allowed.

Issues and decisions

Whether it was in the child’s best interests to continue to receive life-sustaining treatment.

It was no longer in the child’s best interests to receive life-sustaining treatment. The prospect facing him was one of continued life-sustaining treatment that would do no more than sustain him in, at best, a state of profoundly depressed consciousness in which, if he was aware, he was more likely than not only to be minimally so, with no prospect of improvement or recovery and the prospect of repeated chest infections, deformity scoliosis and hip dislocation. It was established that the child’s point of view would be that treatment that was capable of achieving only that would be very unlikely to be acceptable to him, particularly if he was feeling pain.

Notwithstanding the matters on the positive side of the balance sheet, on the evidence, to continue life-sustaining treatment for the child would not result in his recovery and would condemn him to a life of profoundly limited quality. Examining the child’s best interests from a broad perspective, encompassing medical, emotional, sensory and instinctive considerations, and paying due regard to the fundamental, but not immutable, principle of the sanctity of life, it was not in his best interests for life-sustaining medical treatment to be continued (see [99], [100], [110], [111] of the judgment).

Fiona Patterson for the hospital.

Ian Wise QC and Bruno Quintavalle for the mother.

The father appeared in person.

Shabana Jaffar for the child.

Karina Weller - Solicitor (NSW) (non-practising).

Examining the child’s best interests from a broad perspective, encompassing medical, emotional, sensory and instinctive considerations, and paying due regard to the fundamental, but not immutable, principle of the sanctity of life, it was not in his best interests for life-sustaining medical treatment to be continued. Accordingly, the Family Division granted declarations sought by the applicant hospital that the provision of life-sustaining treatment was no longer in his best interests.