Little fighter Ashya King, who hit the headlines last year when his parents removed him from a Southampton medical facility without medical consent, is today alive and free of illness because his parents had the bravery to challenge doctor’s opinions and take him elsewhere for treatment.
Ashya suffered from a brain tumor, and his parents felt that the standard radiotherapy treatment offered by the NHS in England would not save him. Instead, they put forward the suggestion of proton beam therapy, which is not available through the NHS. The doctors treating the child refuted this idea, however.
Thus, Ashya’s father took him out of hospital and fled to Marbella, Spain, where the family owns a holiday home. This sparked an international manhunt which ended up with Ashya’s parents thrown into jail in Spain for a few days.
After a long legal struggle, a High Court judge eventually approved moving Ashya to the Proton Beam Therapy centre in Prague, where the child received the life-saving treatment.
The child’s mother has said that “If we had left Ashya with the NHS in Britain, he would not be with us today. He was too weak and would not have survived.”