UK brain-damaged boy at centre of hospital legal battle dies

LONDON (Reuters) – A 12-year-old British boy with brain damage at the centre of a legal battle over whether to continue his life support system died on Saturday after a hospital ended treatment, his family said.

The parents of Archie Battersbee made unsuccessful appeals at Britain’s highest courts and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against ending the life support.

They also failed to persuade courts to allow them to move Archie to a hospice to die.

Doctors treating Archie in a London hospital have said continuing with life-support would not have been in his best interests and moving the boy to a hospice could have worsened his situation.

The boy had been unconscious since sustaining an injury at the family’s home in Essex, east of London, in April.

“I am the proudest mum in the world, such a beautiful little boy, and he fought right until the very end,” Archie’s mother Hollie Dance told reporters outside the hospital.

(Reporting by William Schomberg; Editing by Andrew Heavens)