When a child is sick and parents and doctors disagree about what to do next, who is best placed to make that decision?

This is a tricky but not uncommon question — with a number of recent high-profile legal cases highlighting the limits of parents’ rights to decide what treatments should be offered.

The issue has been brought into the spotlight again after the parents and healthcare team of Tafida Raqeeb disagreed about whether she should be offered life-sustaining treatment.

Tafida’s parents wanted to take her to Italy for treatment, but a spokesperson for Barts Health NHS Trust in the UK, where she is being cared for, said that “further medical treatment would not improve her condition”.