Case Study
These are the words that Hayden J, Vice President of the Court of Protection, used to describe AH, the applicant in this case. The Official Solicitor identified it as “the most troubling and tragic of cases of this kind” with which she has been involved.
This case is the most recent and cogent in the consideration of best interests under the Mental Capacity Act in terms of continuing life-saving treatment. The “best interests” test is laid out in Aintree University Hospital NHS Trust v James [2013] UKSC 67.
AH’s family was originally from Pakistan. She and her family moved to Uganda but they were expelled, as South Asian residents, under the Idi Amin regime, in the early 1970’s. AH’s medical history showed signs of non-specific arthralgia, raised calcium levels and Type 2 diabetes. She had been diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. She did not smoke, nor did she drink alcohol.
In early January 2020 she suffered a high fever which her doctors identified symptomatic and not causative of the cytokine/autoimmune ‘storm’ which created the “devastating” neurological damage and the pathological processes she has suffered from since. Both her treating doctors had seen similar cytokine ‘storms’ in patients critically ill with Covid-19 although neither has seen damage as extensive as that sustained by the applicant. All agreed that it was in consequence of this ‘storm’ that there had been such “extensive damage” to the nerves and to the muscle as well as to the brain.
By 4th January she was being considered for transfer out of intensive care. Later that day the process of ventilatory weaning was started. But in December 2020 she was back in critical care, requiring renal dialysis, ventilation and sedation. By February 2021 a biopsy revealed necrotising myopathy and severe loss of peripheral motor nerves. She remained intubated.
From the beginning of February, when she was said to show occasional tongue movements and definite signs of improvement but still no response to pain, things gradually evolved. However a biopsy in March 2021 reported, inter alia, that..
Read full post at https://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2021/09/13/the-most-complex-covid-patient-in-the-world/
