Spanish hospital removes life support off terminally sick girl

The Hospital Clinic in the city of Santiago de Compostela (north-west Spain) on Tuesday removed the feeding tube keeping a terminally sick girl live in order to allow her a dignified death.

The case of 12-year-old Andrea had captured headlines in Spain after her parents, Estela Ordonez and Antonio Lago, had argued that their daughter, who is suffering from an incurable degenerative disease, was suffering unnecessary pain as a result of being kept alive through the use of a feeding tube.

Ordonez and Lago last week took the matter to a court in Santiago which ordered four reports to decide whether the life support was "unnecessarily prolonging the child's agony."

The issue had caused debate in Catholic Spain over the rights of parents in such a case and once again raised questions over the subject of euthanasia and the right to a dignified death against the obligation of doctors to do everything possible to keep a patient alive.

The matter became a political as well as a moral issue when the Regional health chief in Galicia, Rocio Mosquera, supported the hospital's decision to keep Andrea alive, accusing the parents of seeking "active euthanasia."

That declaration saw her sacked by the leader of the Galician Regional Assembly, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, and on Monday, after acknowledging that Andrea's health had been failing in recent days, the hospital announced it would remove the feeding tube, while maintaining "minimum hydration."

The lawyer representing Ordonez and Lago said that Andrea "could die in two, four, eight or 32 days," adding her death "would be easier" than her life had been. Endit