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 The family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath, who has been without brain
function and on a ventilator for two weeks at Children's Hospital in
Oakland, California, said they had found an extended-care center
willing to take the girl on an indefinite basis, hospital officials
said on Friday.
But the center will not accept Jahi unless she has surgically
implanted ports for breathing and feeding tubes placed in her body
before the transfer, family attorney Christopher Dolan said on
Thursday. He declined to name the facility.
Children's Hospital has agreed to allow Jahi to be moved, but has
declined to perform additional procedures on her, hospital spokesman
Sam Singer said on Friday.
The family would be required to find an outside physician to implant
tracheotomy and gastric tubes in the girl and supply lawful
transportation services for her, Singer said. Hospital officials
also would need to know the name of the facility taking Jahi, but
that information had not been provided, he added.
Children's Hospital's chief of pediatric medicine, Dr. David Durand,
said in a statement that the hospital "does not believe that
performing surgical procedures on the body of a deceased person is
an appropriate medical practice."
Dolan could not be reached for comment on Friday, but was quoted in
local media as saying the family was looking at various legal
options, including seeking federal court intervention in the case.
"They (Children's Hospital) don't want the attention that's going on
over there, so just help us to get her out of there," Jahi's mother,
Nailah Winkfield, told CNN on Friday.
"I would probably need my child's heart to stop to show me that she
was dead," Winkfield said. "Her heart was still beating, so there's
still life there."
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According to medical experts, Jahi's lungs and heart are only
continuing to function artificially because of air being forced in
and out of her body by the ventilator, without which her breathing
and heartbeat would cease. Unlike an individual in a coma or a
vegetative state, Jahi lacks any brain activity whatsoever,
rendering her unable to breathe on her own, doctors said.
Jahi was admitted to the hospital on December 9 for surgery to
remove her tonsils as a means of treating her sleep apnea. Shortly
after the procedure, she began to bleed severely, suffered a heart
attack and brain swelling, Dolan said. Hospital officials declared
her brain dead on December 12.
The girl's family, who has expressed hope that Jahi might recover
despite her diagnosis, won a restraining order on Monday barring the
hospital from removing her from a ventilator.
On Tuesday, following court testimony by two pediatric neurologists
that Jahi was beyond recovery, Alameda County Superior Court Judge
Evelio Grillo denied a request by relatives to extend his
restraining order, which prohibits the hospital from taking her off
the breathing machine without the family's consent before Monday at
5 p.m. local time.
(Reporting by Laila Kearney; editing by Steve Gorman and Peter
Cooney)
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