LONDON — Hannah Jones, 13, is not afraid of dying — she is afraid of spending her remaining days in a hospital bed.
The British teenager from a small town northwest of London has won a battle to refuse a heart transplant.
Hannah was diagnosed with leukemia at age 4. Doctors later found a heart defect. In eight years, she has had chemotherapy and nearly a dozen operations.
“I’ve been in hospital too much — I’ve had too much trauma,” she told Sky News on Tuesday.
In Britain, children younger than 16 aren’t automatically considered legally competent to make decisions about their health care. Still, British courts have said that a child’s decision can be valid if they have “sufficient understanding and intelligence to enable him or her to understand fully what is proposed.”
