Charlie Gard captured the hearts of the world

Charlie Gard captured the hearts of the world



Charlie Gard was born a 'perfectly healthy' baby on August 4 last year.

His loving parents Chris Gard, 32, and Connie Yates, 31, took him home in Bedfont, west London, to celebrate the birth of their first child.

But what happened next captured the hearts of people across the world as the brave couple initiated a tense and lengthy legal battle regarding their son's life.

At just one month old, Charlie's parents noticed he struggled to lift his head and support himself like other children his age.

Just a few weeks later, their son was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition when he began to lose weight.

He became just the 16th person in the world to be diagnosed with mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, which causes progressive muscle weakness and brain damage.

Charlie was transferred to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and his parents launched a desperate bid to save their son's life.  

Doctors there said they wanted the boy, who was then 10 months old, to be able to 'die with dignity' and his mother quickly found an American doctor who was willing to offer her son a trial therapy.

Mr Gard and Ms Yates began a crowd funding campaign to help finance the US treatment in January, however, the hospital - where he was staying - suggested that experimental treatment in the US would not work.



In March this year, Great Ormond Street bosses ask Mr Justice Francis to rule that life-support treatment should stop which, just over a month later, he agreed.

This prompted a long and tense legal battle between the hospital and Mr Gard and Miss Yates.

At first, they asked the Court of Appeal to consider the case. Despite a petition calling on the Prime Minister to release the boy from hospital being signed by 110,000 people, three judges at the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court's ruling on May 25.

 The couple then took the case to the Supreme Court, but lost that fight on June 8.

Subsequently, they asked European Court of Human Rights judges, to consider the case.

But the judges refused to overturn a ruling to switch Charlie's life support off on June 27.



This was Mr Gard and Ms Yates' final appeal and they were said to be 'utterly distraught' when the verdict was announced in Strasbourg, France.

The decision came after Charlie's parents made a number of emotional appeals urging the public to help them fight for their son's life.

While he was being treated in hospital, they raised a staggering £1.4million thanks to the help of those who were known as the so-called 'Charlie's Army'.

The money they raised - which was thanks to donations from around the world, including from celebrities - was enough for Charlie to travel by air ambulance and to cover the cost of the experimental treatment.

On July 3, the Pediatric Hospital Bambino Gesu, known as the 'Pope's Hospital' which sits close to the Vatican's walls, offered to treat Charlie.

President of the hospital, Mariella Enoc, tweeted that the Holy Father’s own words in support of Charlie 'sum up our mission'.

She said: 'I have asked the health director to check with Great Ormond Street Hospital if there are sanitary conditions for an eventual transfer of Charlie to our hospital. We know that the case is desperate'.

President Trump subsequently rallied behind the family and tweeted: 'If we can help little Charlie Gard as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so.'

The Pope later tweeted: 'To defend human life, above all when it is wounded by illness, is a duty of love that God entrusts to all.'

He also offered to give Charlie a Vatican passport so he can be flown there for potentially life-saving treatment.

Congressmen in Washington DC subsequently proposed to hand the Gards permanent residency so they can access potentially life-saving treatment.

But under the High Court ruling, GOSH was forbidden from allowing Charlie to be transferred for nucleoside therapy anywhere.

US medics later said they were willing to ship the vital medicine he needs to Great Ormond Street and 'advise their medical staff on administering it if they are willing to do so.'

But after the European Court refused to intervene in the case, his parents had to deal with fresh heartbreak when they were told their son's life support machine would be switched off imminently on