T. Paavendhan of Srimushnam Taluk in Cuddalore district is all set to turn 10 on September 30. Around the same time, a team of doctors, constituted on the directions of the Madras High Court, will be considering his father’s plea to put the child to sleep for he has been suffering from congenital Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE), a brain dysfunction caused due to low supply of oxygen.
The child’s father R. Thirumeni, 54, filed a writ petition in the Madras High Court seeking permission “to withdraw all forms of food, nutrition and medicines” being provided to his son and resort to passive euthanasia.
‘In vegetative state’
In his affidavit, the petitioner, a tailor, lists multiple reasons for filing such a case, the most excruciating of them being poverty. According to the litigant, Paavendhan was born to him as the third child in 2008. He also has two girl children. The boy did not cry after delivery and suffered an epileptic attack on the day of birth itself. After consulting various paediatric neurologists and conducting several investigations, it came to be known that he was suffering from HIE on November 6, 2008.
Stating that his son “is typically in a persistent vegetative state” for almost a decade, the petitioner claimed that all doctors whom he had consulted prescribed only anti-epileptic drugs and medicines to reduce the number of attacks suffered by the child on a daily basis. None of them gave hope of recovery or reversibility of the medical condition.
In March 2016, a team doctors in Thiruvananthapuram carried out long-term video electroencephalography on Paavendhan and found him to be suffering from epileptic encephalopathy. Continuous medication had only reduced the number of epileptic attacks suffered by him from over 100 to around 10 to 20 times a day, the petitioner said.
“I am having to spend ₹10,000 per month on the medicines for my son apart from undergoing continuous mental agony to see him suffer endlessly... Continuous bawling of the child causes severe disturbance and trauma to people inside the house as well as the neighbours and my other two children face social embarrassment as well as isolation. No asylum or home of any kind is willing to give any kind of shelter or palliative care to my son,” the petitioner said and sought the court’s permission to put his son to sleep. His counsel N. Kavitha Rameshwar filed the case on the basis of Supreme Court’s March 9 judgment upholding a person’s right to refuse treatment and die with dignity.
The judgment had held that in cases of terminally ill patients, who were not in a position to make a request for passive euthanasia, their family members could file writ petitions before jurisdictional High Courts. Such petitions could be heard only by a Division Bench which, in turn, should obtain medical opinion from a team of doctors before taking a decision.
Paavendhan’s case was listed before Justices N. Kirubakaran and S. Baskaran, who on Friday, obtained a list of doctors from the petitioner, the Central government as well as the State government. Thereafter, they picked one doctor from each of the three lists and requested the doctors to decide the specialists who would be required to examine Paavendhan.
Senior neurosurgeon J. Reginald, retired professor of paediatrics P. Ramachandren and medical officer of Central Government Health Scheme Uma Maheshwari Ramesh would have to hold deliberations at the Government Multi Super Speciality Hospital at Omandurar Government estate and submit a report to the court by September 10.