Young Jakarta blast victim in coma amid custody battle
Young Jakarta blast victim in coma amid custody battle
Bernice Han
Agence France-Presse/Singapore
A five-year-old girl wounded in last week's Jakarta bombing which
killed her Indonesian mother was still in a coma on Monday amid a
custody battle between two men claiming to be her father.
Elisabeth Manuela Bambina Musu suffered some brain damage and
was on a respirator, neurosurgeon Dr. Ng Puay Yong told reporters
at Singapore's private Mount Elizabeth Hospital where she had
been airlifted for treatment.
"We are still watching her very closely. She is still in a
critical condition. In a nutshell, she is not out of the woods
yet," he said.
"At the moment, she would still fit the definition of coma
because she is not opening her eyes and talking to you
consciously," he said.
It will take at least six months to assess if the girl,
nicknamed Manny, will sustain any long-term injuries although her
current situation suggests the right side of her body will have
some disability, Ng said.
A piece of shrapnel remains lodged in her brain after surgery
and doctors have deemed it too dangerous to remove it for now.
"She definitely has some brain damage on the left side so it
is expected that the right side will have some degree of
disability," Ng said.
Asked if he believed Manny knew her mother had died, he said:
"Probably not."
Manny is at the center of a custody battle after Emanuel Musu,
an Italian security guard who married her mother, and the
mother's former partner, Australian policeman David Norman, both
claimed to be her father.
In Australia, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said a DNA
test had proved that Norman is the father. It was conducted
before Manny was granted Australian citizenship earlier this
month, Downer told commercial radio.
"I understand that a DNA test was done before the little girl
took out Australian citizenship," Downer said.
"When I raised this question with the embassy, they told me
that a DNA test had, in any case, been done and the Australian
was identified through the DNA test as the father of the little
girl.
"And it was on the basis of that sort of information, on
providing authentic evidence of her being the daughter of an
Australian citizen, that she was granted Australian citizenship
on Sept. 1."
Dr. Ng said Manny's relatives were with her at the hospital's
intensive care unit, but declined to say if it was the Italian or
Australian side. "The family saw her ... they visited her," Ng
said.