Charlie Gard: Great Ormond Street staff report suffering 'shocking and disgraceful abuse'

GOSH chairwoman Mary MacLeod said that Doctors and nurses have been subjected to abuse in the street and received thousands of threatening messages in recent weeks.

The hospital is in close contact with the Metropolitan Police over the incidents, she added in a statement.

Ms MacLeod said: “Charlie Gard’s case is a heart-breaking one. We fully understand that there is intense public interest, and that emotions run high.

“We recognise the tireless advocacy of Charlie’s loving parents and the natural sympathy people feel with his situation.

“However, in recent weeks the GOSH community has been subjected to a shocking and disgraceful tide of hostility and disturbance.

“Staff have received abuse both in the street and online.

“Thousands of abusive messages have been sent to doctors and nurses whose life’s work is to care for sick children.

“Many of these messages are menacing, including death threats.

“Families have been harassed and discomforted while visiting their children, and we have received complaints of unacceptable behaviour even within the hospital itself.

“Whatever the strong emotions raised by this case, there can be no excuse for patients and families to have their privacy and peace disturbed as they deal with their own often very stressful situations or for dedicated doctors and nurses to suffer this kind of abuse.

“Great Ormond Street Hospital is in close contact with the Metropolitan Police and we will do everything possible to hold to account anybody involved in this kind of deplorable behaviour.”

The 10-month old baby was born “perfectly healthy” on August 4, last year but around a month later his parents Chris Gard and Connie Yates noticed that he was less able to lift his head and support himself in comparison with other babies of a similar age.

Doctors discovered he had a rare inherited disease – infantile onset encephalomyopathy mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome (MDDS).

He was moved to the world-famous children’s hospital in central London in October for treatment.

His parents want to take him to see specialists in the United States who could offer him an experimental therapy known as nucleoside.

However doctors in the UK decide that the treatment would not improve Charlie’s quality of life, with the two sides leading to resort to the legal process to decide what would happen.

On April 11 this year Mr Justice Francis said doctors could stop providing life-support treatment after analysing the case at a hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

Charlie’s parents then took the case to the Court of Appeal which was heard on May 23 with the court dismissing the appeal two days later.

A month later the parents lost their case in the Supreme Court.

Later in June the European Court of Human Rights said they had started to analyse the case but later said they would not intervene.

The case is now due back in the High Court on Monday.