November 12, 2008	Wednesday	Ziqa'ad 13, 1429

LONDON, Nov 11: A 13-year-old terminally ill girl has been allowed by the courts here to decide whether she wanted to live or die.

And she has chosen to die with what she said ‘dignity’ and spend the remaining days with her parents at home. Hannah Jone’s dying wish to visit Disney World in Florida, however, is in doubt because the family cannot find an insurer to cover her for the trip.

Hannah has won a legal battle against a hospital’s attempt to force her to have a life-saving heart transplant against her will.

She decided against the surgery. But her local Hereford hospital initiated high court proceedings to remove her, temporarily, from her parents’ custody to allow the transplant.

The Guardian on Tuesday reported that health officials have since abandoned the proceedings, but the teenager, from Marden, Herefordshire, who was diagnosed with a rare form of leukaemia at five, was forced to plead her case to a child protection officer from her hospital bed.

Her plea was conveyed to barristers at the high court in London who decided she was mature enough to make the decision for herself and the order was thrown out.

The family later received a letter from the hospital insisting that it always puts the patient’s interests first, but stopping short of an apology. Her mother Kirsty, an intensive care nurse, and father Andrew, an auditor, have condemned the hospital’s legal action. “It is outrageous that the people from the hospital could presume we didn’t have our daughter’s best interests at heart,” said Andrew.