Mother of Tafida Raqeeb says British doctors who said she had no prospect of recovering have been proven wrong

Tafida Raqeeb, a five-year-old British girl treated in Italy for a serious brain injury after her parents won a high court battle to keep her on life support, is out of intensive care.

Tafida was brought to Genoa’s Gaslini children’s hospital on 15 October after the high court ruled against the opinion of doctors at the Royal London hospital, where the child was on life support, who said it was in her best interests for treatment to be withdrawn because she had no awareness or prospect of recovering.

Doctors at Gaslini said on Wednesday that Raqeeb has been transferred to a residential unit for children with chronic or incurable illnesses, where she will receive rehabilitative care and be partially weaned off assisted ventilation.

“Tafida no longer needs intensive care,” said Andrea Moscatelli, who leads Gaslini’s neonatal intensive care unit. “In cases of very serious neurological damage such as these, the prognosis is practically impossible. We will know over time. We are trying to give this little girl time to understand if there’ll be a potential improvement, and much of that potential improvement is yet to be understood.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Parents of Tafida Raqeeb, Shelima Begum and Mohammed Raqeeb, at the Gaslini hospital in Genoa. Photograph: Luca Zennaro/EPA

Moscatelli said the aim is to support the child’s vital functions up to a point where it would be possible for her parents, Shelina Begum and Mohammed Raqeeb, from Newham, east London, to care for her at home. “This would make it possible for her to be fed and have mechanical ventilation at home,” he said.

At a press conference at Gaslini, Begum thanked medics “for taking extremely good care of Tafida”.

“Today is an extremely special day for us because Tafida is finally out of intensive care,” she said. “I would also like to say that the opinion expressed by British doctors before the high court and the prognosis made has been proven incorrect. We should be able to give you good news in the coming months.”