Pictured: Alfie Evans, who has an undiagnosed brain condition and is currently on life-support
The parents of a 20-month-old boy with a degenerative brain disorder will today beg a judge not to turn off their son’s life support machines.
Tom Evans, 21, insists his son Alfie, who doctors say is in a ‘semi-vegetative state’, is ‘not dying – he’s improving’ as he makes a last-ditch plea to fight the wishes of a Liverpool hospital to end his life.
Medical professionals say they have exhausted all options in trying to diagnose and treat the toddler’s mystery brain condition.
But Mr Evans and his partner Kate James, 20, from Liverpool, will ask a High Court judge not to allow his life support at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool to be switched off.
Alfie’s father told the Daily Mirror: ‘At the moment we are not willing to let him die.
‘He still has function of the brain, he still reacts. We believe Alfie is not dying. He is improving.’
Celebrities including I’m a Celebrity’s Jamie Lomas, Dennis Wise and Rebekah Vardy backed the campaign after visiting the youngster.
Mrs Vardy – wife of Premier League footballer and England international Jamie – took to Twitter to report on the boy’s condition as his father claimed ‘he is not dying, he is improving’.
Celebrities including I’m a Celebrity’s Jamie Lomas, Dennis Wise and Rebekah Vardy backed the campaign after visiting the youngster
Tom Evans and Kate James leave the High Court in London as a High Court judge is analysing preliminary issues in the case of their sick 19-month-old son Alfie, who is at the centre of a life-support treatment dispute
She tweeted: ‘Today Alfie squeezed my finger every time I tickled his little hand. I watched him with my own eyes reacting to his dad’s touch.
‘He is sucking a dummy & spitting it out, he is using his senses. Please help Alfie & his family to save him.’
The campaign to keep Alfie alive was sparked when the hospital said all options to diagnose and treat the unknown brain condition had been exhausted.
Mr Evans and the boy’s 20-year-old mother, Kate James, say specialists have claimed he can’t use senses.
Both dispute some of the findings by the hospital and hope to take the baby to doctors in Italy.
They think the Vatican’s Bambino Gesu Paediatric Hospital might be able to diagnose his condition and recommend treatment.
The hospital in Rome is the same one that offered to help Charlie Gard in 2016.
Mr Evans and Ms James want to take Alfie home to die if nothing more can be done to keep him alive.
Mr Evans said: ‘At the moment we are not willing to let him die.
‘But if we have turned all the stones over and don’t wake our child up… we will wait for him to deteriorate and let him die in his own way.
‘We can take him home and still care for him but knowing he will die in our home, knowing we have tried everything.’
But he believes Alfie ‘still has function of the brain’ and reacts to stimuli.
Rebekah Vardy took to Twitter to claim Alfie is able to use his senses after she and othe rI’m a Celebrity stars visited him
Alfie’s parents will beg a High Court judge to ensure that his life support is not switched off at the Liverpool hospital
Both he and Ms James realise that if Alfie lives, he will be disabled because of his neurological illness.
Mr Justice Hayden visited the youngster on Tuesday before the start of today’s hearing at Liverpool’s Civil and Family Court.
Mr Evans will represent the couple himself at the hearing and is planning to ask for an adjournment in order to find a new legal team.
Almost £60,000 has been raised through a JustGiving page aiming to fund treatment abroad.
A change.org petition has garnered nearly 70,000 signatures on a page asking the hospital to release the baby so his parents can take him somewhere else.
Alder Hey said it understands the difficulty the family faces and said professionals will reach an appropriate care plan for the future.
‘Alder Hey is a specialist children’s hospital which therefore means we treat many children with often complex, life-threatening conditions.
‘Unfortunately despite the best efforts of our clinicians, some children are sadly unable to recover from their illness.’
Alfie’s mother and father are hoping to take him to Italy in order that he can be diagnosed and treatment can be recommended
During today’s hearing judge Mr Justice Hayden offered to visit Alfie in hospital before the full trial in February next year
Mr Evans and Ms James said Alfie was healthy until he ‘stopped developing’ at four months, before a chest infection gave him seizures in December 2016.
As his condition worsened in hospital, specialists feared that he had only hours to live. He is kept breathing by a ventilator.
In 2016 a High Court judge ruled life-support treatment could be stopped for Charlie Gard, whose parents wanted him to undergo trial therapy for his rare genetic disease in the US. Charlie died in July.
The parents of 11-month-old Isaiah Haastrup this week lost their fight to keep the brain-damaged boy’s life-support switched on.