A YOUNG girl died in hospital after a battle with severe ill health.

Amarni Loveridge had suffered from respiratory problems for much of her life but “could fight no longer” after her condition began to deteriorate earlier this year.

She was just 11 when she died.

An inquest into her death, held in Brighton, heard that when she was seven and a half months old Amarni suffered a hypoxic brain injury in hospital, meaning there was a lack of oxygen being supplied to her brain.

This caused severe cerebral palsy, a lifelong condition which affects movement and co-ordination.

As a result of her disability, Amarni also suffered from other illnesses including epileptic seizures, difficulty breathing and regular chest infections.

This meant she needed “constant care” and her adoptive parents had a great number of plans in place to make sure she was fully cared for.

Brighton and Hove coroner Veronica Hamilton-Deeley said “she had complex needs and required multiple hospital admissions throughout her life”. But she said: “The level of care at home was so good, Amarni didn’t come to hospital as often as we would have expected.

“But it seems to me to me it was almost inevitable the respiratory tract infections got worse as she got older.”

On June 17 she was taken by ambulance to the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital in Brighton after struggling to breathe as she got ready to go to school, at the Chailey Heritage Foundation, in the morning.

An X-ray confirmed she had pneumonia and was admitted to the critical care unit where she used a breathing machine. But, despite treatments including antibiotics and physiotherapy, her condition continued to worsen.

Miss Hamilton-Deeley said: “Recognition of the end of Amarni’s life was made relatively early.

“Although you must have realised it was inevitable Mrs Loveridge, you must have hoped you could get her through each bout of pneumonia.”

Mrs Loveridge, a nurse, said: “Every hospital admission was always difficult because of her condition. Mentally we had always prepared ourselves for the winter rather than the summer. At first it looked like she was going to have a normal admission, but she did not improve.”

Miss Hamilton-Deeley described Amarni as “stable in her deterioration” and said her parents “effectively moved into the hospital”.

On June 24 it “became clear physio was probably distressing her more than helping her so that was stopped”.

She died in hospital the following day at 11.30pm.

In her conclusion, Miss Hamilton-Deeley listed the contributing factors to Amarni’s death as respiratory failure, pneumonia, a hypoxic brain injury in 2008, reflux and severe cerebral palsy.

She said: “What is clear to me is Amarni, through all her short life, was surrounded by the care of most loving parents and carers, as well as teams who specialised in providing her with what she needed.

“Inevitably, from time to time, things would not run smoothly but with any treatment there is a risk that something could go wrong.

When you are trying to give a child like Amarni as normal a life as possible, movement can lead to these arrangements being changed.

“She had extraordinary plans in place which allowed her to live longer than she was expected to.”