Five-year-old Ashya King, who is suffering from a brain tumor, arrives at the Proton Therapy Centre in Prague, Czech Republic, yesterday.

AFP/Prague

Five-year-old British brain tumour patient Ashya King began a six-week course of potentially life-saving proton beam therapy at a Prague medical centre yesterday.

King’s case made headlines after his parents removed him from a British hospital last month, sparking an international manhunt.

Clutching a pale blue giraffe toy, Ashya arrived at the Proton Therapy Centre (PTC) yesterday for the first of the thirty targeted sessions of irradiation.

“We carried out the first irradiation as planned, there were no unpredicted complications, everything took place as planned, and we’ll continue today,” said Jiri Kubes, head of the proton therapy department.

Doctors said children with similar diagnoses had a 70% chance of recovery. Ashya was under general anaesthetic for the procedure. The therapy, which is not available in Britain, is touted as being more precise than conventional radiotherapy as it uses a proton beam to target only malignant cells in highly precise manner.

“The procedure takes two to three hours, the patient spends about 40-50 minutes in the irradiation room, but the proton beam is on only for a few minutes,” said Vladimir Vondracek, head of the clinical physics department at the PTC.

Ashya will be anaesthetised for each session, which “of course is not too positive but the benefit of having a motionless child during the irradiation is obvious,” said Vondracek.

The centre said the first 13 sessions would target “the whole area including the spinal cord to ensure the tumour is not spreading via cerebrospinal fluid,” while the next 17 sessions will target only the tumour.

Ashya arrived in Prague on September 8 from Spain where his parents had taken him after whisking him away from a British hospital because they feared that traditional radiotherapy would damage his brain.

His parents were detained in Spain on an international warrant, after British authorities suspected they were not acting in the best interests of the child.

But after the couple spent four days in a Spanish prison, a British court reunited them with their son in a Spanish hospital and allowed them to travel to Prague for the treatment.

The case received substantial coverage in the British media, with public opinion shifting from outrage to sympathy for the parents. British prosecutors have dropped the case against them after acknowledging that Ashya had been properly cared for.

 

 

 

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