A father suffered a heart attack while being arrested for refusing to leave his dying daughter's bedside in a hospital, and now says he is working to make sure other grieving parents have no such experience to endure.
The father, Dr. Rashid Abbasi, 48, recovered from the critical health crisis that happened just about a year ago – shortly before his daughter, Zainab, died.
He refused to leave his daughter's bedside because doctors planned to enforce "end of life 'treatment'" on the six-year-old girl, who suffered from the rare life-limiting neurodegenerative condition called Niemann-Pick Disease.
He now, supported by the Christian Legal Center, has begun legal proceedings against the police for wrongful arrest and they also are considering action against the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, where the girl died.
Abbasi said, in a report released by the Christian Legal Center, "We have lost our daughter Zainab, but we want to take action for future Zainabs so that no one else has to go through what she did and what we have."
The video captures the minutes it took for Abbasi to be forcibly arrested, and it carries a warning that the content is disturbing:
Just before the video launches, Abbasi and other family members were told doctors would be stopping any life-saving treatment.
Abbasi's response is that they are trying "to kill my daughter."
That's essentially confirmed as medical staff members are saying that withdrawing life support needs to start "straight away."
On the video posted by Christian Concern, it explains almost immediately, Abbasi said, "I’ve got chest pains; I will have a heart attack!"
In fact, the report from Christian Concern confirmed, "The arrest led to Dr Rashid Abbasi having a heart attack."
The organization reported that the medical team made the announcement about the end of treatment, and implemented that without the family's consent.
"Doctors at the hospital, which cannot be named for legal reasons, called for the police to remove or arrest Dr Abbasi after they announced they would withdraw treatment and ultimately enforce end of life 'treatment' on his six-year-old daughter, Zainab, through extubating her."
The report explains there were numerous disagreements between the family and the doctors because the physicians were reluctant to treat a patient they expected to die anyway.
When Abbasi and his wife "refused to consent to their daughter’s immediate extubation, the doctors tried to hand over a letter to severely restrict him from visiting his critically ill daughter. A few days earlier staff had tried to restrict his access due to claims that he was difficult but had to step down after he challenged the decision," the organization said.
Abbassi is sitting beside his daughter when the video beings. Then police insist on speaking with him outside saying that "they have some concerns about his behavior."
He charges that that is a lie and he doesn't want to leave his daughter, who "is dying."
He's then threatened with arrest.
"At no point, however, were the police able to produce any paperwork justifying this course of action. Police have still not produced any justification for Dr. Abbasi’s arrest, despite our requesting all footage from the police officers," the organization reported.
Officers then use a "metal spiked instrument to unclasp his hand from his daughters."
His wife his physically pulled away and screams in distress, the report said.
Abbasi then is dragged away from the bed, and he asks for help because of his heart attack.
"His repeated requests, however, are ignored by the police and he is instead told that he is ‘disgusting’ and is an ‘animal’ who has brought it all on himself. The police handcuff him, kick him, strap his legs together, dump him on a trolley and wheel him out of the unit," Christian Concern said.
He later was released and medical records confirmed his heart attack.
Doctors did, in fact, slowly withdraw treatment from the little girl, and she died in September.
"I reacted as any father would who is suffering from grief, but I also knew in my professional capacity that my daughter was purposefully not receiving the treatment she needed to live," Abbasi said. "For challenging this and trying to protect my daughter’s life, I was treated like a criminal and an animal. This was brutal and unacceptable, but we want to emphasize that it was the doctors and the hospital who escalated the situation and involved the police unnecessarily."
Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Center, said: "Any parent or indeed anyone who has ever lost a loved one will be deeply moved and appalled by this story. You could not find more caring and loving parents who simply wanted their daughter to have a chance to continue to live.
"The family showed an extraordinary amount of restraint in the face of their brutal treatment by the police and the hospital. They genuinely feared that their only daughter, their youngest child was about to die."
Williams continued, "Sadly, the culture of death has resulted in more and more of this type of story, from Alfie Evans to Charlie Gard, where deeply disturbing decisions have been made by treating clinicians, police and the courts. The family, in their grief, have the whole legal machinery tumble down on them and no one advocating for them during the most harrowing life experience anyone could imagine."
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