Connie Yates & Chris Gard
Connie Yates & Chris Gard are the devastated parents of baby Charlie Gard –who was born with a rare genetic condition last August. The British couple recently announced their little boy died just weeks before his first birthday.
Connie Yates & Chris Gard welcomed Charlie on August 4, 2016. He he was born a “perfectly healthy” baby at full term and at a “healthy weight.” After about a month, however, Charlie’s parents, noticed that he was less able to lift his head and support himself than other babies of a similar age.
Doctors discovered he had a rare inherited disease – infantile onset encephalomyopathy mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome (MDDS).
The condition causes progressive muscle weakness and brain damage.
In October, after he had became lethargic and his breathing shallow, he was transferred to the Great Ormond Street Hospital.
31-year-old Connie Yates and her husband, Chris reside in Bedfont, west London. She is a carer and 32-year-old Chris Gard works as a postman. The two were unaware they were carriers of the gene that made their little boy sick.
The first time parents fought a fierce battle to give Charlie all options available.
Aside from the hurting of seeing their baby ill, Connie Yates & Chris Gard had to face a legal battle after they wanted to take Charlie to see specialists in the USA, who had offered an experimental therapy called nucleoside.
But doctors at GOSH concluded that the experimental treatment, which is not designed to be curative, would not improve Charlie’s quality of life.
When parents do not agree about a child’s future treatment, it is standard legal process to ask the courts to make a decision.
The court’s decision was to stop providing life support for Charlie. However Charlie’s parents then asked Court of Appeal judges to consider the case.
The desperate parents even raised over £1 million for Charlie’s treatment through a GoFundMe page.
But months of back and forth with the Supreme Court and later with judges in the European Court of Human Rights made Charlie to have no prospect of getting better.
Accoridng to the couple’s lawyer, the delays meant Charlie’s muscles had suffered irreversible damage and therefore the Connie Yates & Chris Gard withdraw their request to change the original court order in late June.
Court eventually denied his parents the chance to bring their son home to die and he was taken to a hospice. Charlie died on July 28, 2017.
Our condolences to both Connie Yates & Chris Gard.
You can find Connie Yates on Twitter here.
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