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.