Posted on 01/19/2006 6:02:21 AM PST by marthemaria
Debate erupts over a little girl's life Doctors at a hospital in Bergen plan to take a four-year-old girl off the respirator that's kept her alive for the past four months. Her father is fighting their intentions, and now he's won some support from another doctor in Trondheim. Kristina Hjartåker, age four, has been in a coma for months and can't breathe without a respirator. Her father is fighting to keep her alive.
PHOTO: Privat / SCANPIX
Doctors at Haukeland University Hospital continued trying to convince Oddmund Hjartåker on Friday that there was no point trying to keep his daughter Kristina alive. She was badly injured in a landslide in September and has been unconscious ever since.
Doctors claim she is now both deaf and blind. She can't breathe without the respirator.
"We believe it's meaningless to keep the girl artificially alive," Stener Kvinsland, director at Haukeland University Hospital, told Aftenposten.no. "We've come to this conclusion after an extremely comprehensive evaluation over a long time."
State health authorities and a city court in Bergen came to the same conclusion, but Kristina's father remains unconvinced. He told TV2 that his daughter isn't brain dead, and has opened her eyes.
Another doctor and professor at St Olav's Hospital in Trondheim, Dag Bratlid, says that taking Kristina off the respirator would violate the law. "Health personnel have a duty to work with the family when it comes to treatment," Bratlid said.
There's also precedence within Norwegian health care to go along with the family's wishes, he said. A study he conducted of 178 deaths of children showed that treatment was ended in the case of 175, with the consent of the children's parents.
In three of the cases, parents opposed treatment being stopped, and their wishes were respected.
Kristina's father's lawyer has filed a court appeal of the Haukeland doctors' decision, but time is running out. The doctors decided on Thursday to take Kristina off the respirator on Saturday.
I lift Kristina up to God - may He protect her and may His will be done...
While i think the dad is not wise in his decision, it is his decision to make.
If she is in a coma how do they know she can't hear or see? Dad needs to get her out of there.
It's only been four months. People have come out of comas after much longer periods of time.
the doctors also say that the treatment she is recieving may cause her pain and thats a reason to end it . Can braindead people feel pain?
Wait, you are right. Didn't Terri Schiavo's 'doctors' say she was NOT feeling any pain, from being starved and dehydrated, because she was brain dead?
They need to get together on this.......
I wonder if the father can either purchase or be provided with the necessary equipment and take the little girl home or to the other doctor for care.
This is what happens when the gov't controls the healthcare system. Other people (not you or your family) make these decisions.
On norwegian TV, the dad said that he told her to squize his finger if she could hear him, and so she did...
I say give her some more time. 4 months is to short, but if she does not get better they should pull the plug soon. Its very expensive to keep people artificially alive because of all the equipment and staff needed. So the wise decision is to let her get some more time and then see what happens. If we start using feelings instead of brains in hospitals cost will be enormous. You can use infinite of time and resources in health care. The hard decision is to streamline and use brains instead of feelings. By using brains you can treat much more people.
"We believe it's meaningless to keep the girl artificially alive," = "We believe that life is meaningless"
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