Save Alfie Evans! Tell the hospital to let his parents take him home. Sign here.
IMPORTANT: For live updates on the Alfie Evans case, click here.
LIVERPOOL, April 26, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) — The parents of Alfie Evans will today meet with doctors of Alder Hey hospital and they are asking to take their child home.
In a video interview this morning outside Alder Hey hospital (see below), Thomas Evans held up a photo of Alfie taken last evening and said: “Look at the smile. Look at the smile. I said to them reduce the drugs and reduce the ventilator and he will breathe.”
“The third day now and there’s not been one single problem with him. The nurse came in and said: ‘Wow, Wow,’” he added.
Speaking to reporters about yesterday’s Court of Appeal ruling, Evans said: “We got rejected yesterday to go to Italy, unfortunately. We could take it further, but would it be the right thing to do? Would people give me more criticism? So what we are going to do today is we have a meeting with the doctors at Alder Hey and we now start asking to go home.”
“Alfie does not need intensive care. Alfie is lying on his bed with one liter of oxygen going into his lungs, and the rest is him,” his father said.
He continued:
Some people are saying it’s a miracle. It’s not a miracle. It’s a misdiagnosis. There’s no miracle about this. I’ve had a feeling about Alfie’s condition for a long time now … he’s been off the ventilator for three and there’s been no deterioration. He hasn’t awoken, he’s still a little bit weak, but what we ask for is to go home to sustain his life because there have been no neurological assessments here. There’s been no immediate care for him. It’s just nurses sitting outside the room and leaving us in the room to do what we do.
“What we do now, we can do at home,” he said.
Evans expressed his gratitude for the outpouring of support Alfie has received from around the world. He said he just heard this morning that the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda, has spoken out.
“The support we have now from Poland, it’s amazing,” he said. “We’ve always been in touch with the Polish. People are starting to raise their heads now, because Alder Hey is making this hole bigger for themselves at the end of the day.”
He added: “This shouldn’t be about cost. It’s not about cost, it’s about Alfie. He’s proven everyone wrong, except me and his mum. That’s why we’re here today, because we knew, we had the feeling that Alfie would make it.”
IMPORTANT: For live updates on the Alfie Evans case, click here.
Updating reporters on Alfie’s condition, Evan said: “He’s still fighting, very comfortably and content. He’s showing us that he’s still alive. His stats are perfect, his heart rate is stable. I’m shocked … It was an aggressive extubation. It was aggressive. It was the wrong person who did it, let’s put it that way. As soon as the tube came out Alfie coughed and straight away, immediately, he breathes.”
The 21-year-old father also hit back against claims made by hospital lawyers at yesterday’s hearing that Alfie’s breathing on his own “is not a change in circumstances,” and that “it was never suggested that death would be instantaneous. He said:
I’ve just been going through the February hearings, and as you all know, one of the doctors outside of Alder Hey said Alfie would not last 24 hours without the ventilator, and then there was another comment from a doctor saying that he’d only last two to three minutes. I’m sure for the media that was in the court case, which was the BBC, they will remember that the whole argument for Alfie was that he would not last. That was the whole argument and that’s why Alder Hey took us to court.
“Alder Hey, you’ve taken us to court. You’ve removed the tube, and you were wrong,” he said. “Alfie lives, comfortably, happily, without ventilation. That must be enough for you to consider now that Alfie may prove you wrong all the way through this, and that it may be a general misdiagnosis.”
Fielding questions from reporters, Thomas Evans appealed to Queen Elizabeth, saying “please step up, speak out, and get our son out of here. There are enough people, enough governments, enough parliaments, enough MEPs, enough MPs behind us.”
“The Polish president is behind us. Please, look into my eyes, release my son. Speak out, stand up, and get Alfie home,” he said.
The 21-year-old father also thanked the Italian people for their support, saying: “We love you all. Your strength and courage to our family has been absolutely amazing. […] We have been given so much strength by the Italian people and government. We cannot thank you all enough.”
“Alfie is part of the Italian family now,” he said.
He appealed to the Italians to keep pressing the UK government, and invited Pope Francis to come and see how Alfie “is being held hostage.”