CHESTER’S TV doctor Ravi Jayaram has felt “compelled” to speak out once more in the row over the treatment of Alfie Evans.

It comes after some members of protest group ‘Alfie’s Army’ tried to storm into Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool yesterday (April 23) where the seriously ill toddler is on life support.

Dr Jayaram, a consultant paediatrician at the Countess of Chester Hospital, said he had heard some protesters had suggested setting off fire alarms so the building would be evacuated.

Staff, patients and visitors had also been met with aggression if they failed to show support for the protest.

He said yesterday on Facebook: “It pains me to have to write more about this as I’d much rather avoid the inevitable abuse but as a paediatrician I feel compelled to speak out.

“The events at Alder Hey today have been beyond belief. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the Alfie Evans case, it is inexcusable for people, be they family, friends or unrelated supporters, to have caused such disruption and chaos.

“It may be a common site to see police officers lined up against crowds at football matches but to see such a scene outside a children’s hospital is verging on dystopian.”

Alfie’s father, Tom Evans, told supporters just after 9am this morning (Tuesday, April 24) that the life support had been withdrawn and Alfie had been breathing unassisted for more than 10 hours.

He and partner Kate James, Alfie’s mum, have lost fights in the high court, court of appeal, supreme court and European court of human rights (ECHR).

They say “the state” is wrongly interfering with their parental choice and want to move their 23-month-old son to a hospital in Rome for further treatment.

Backed by The Pope, they have even tried to secure Italian citizenship for their son in a bid to circumvent UK law.

However, it has now emerged that this last-ditch attempt has failed.

Born on May 9, 2016, Alfie is said to be in a “semi-vegetative state” and has a degenerative neurological condition.

Specialists at Alder Hey say keeping him on a ventilator is not in "his best interests" and any further treatment is not only "futile" but also "unkind and inhumane".

Commenting on the angry scenes outside Alder Hey, Dr Jayaram wrote: “It disgusts me that these people seem to believe that complex and difficult medical ethical decision-making might be influenced by screaming abuse at staff, threatening them and disrupting the day to day activities of hard working staff.

“There have been many reports on social media of children being terrified whilst walking in and out of the hospital, children asking their parents if the doctors and nurses who have looked after them want to harm them and of visitors being abused verbally if they don’t explicitly show support.

“A junior doctor working there described how he went to work at a hospital in the morning and left in a war zone.”

He added: “This a children’s hospital. There are ill, scared little ones in there within earshot of all this hatred, there are anxious, worried and stressed parents who are having to cope with all of this disruption and, above all, there are clinical and non-clinical staff who continue to go to work every day and every night to look after extremely poorly children in spite of this daily harassment that seems to be worsening day by day.

“I understand that suggestions have been made to try to gain access to the ICU or to set off fire alarms so that the building has to be evacuated. Phone calls are being made and staff are being abused by faceless cowardly voices. I know that the protesters are passionate about what they believe to be true; even if they were totally right, this behaviour is disgraceful and put other children at Alder Hey at significant risk of harm.”

Dr Jayaram, who presented Channel 4’s ‘Born Naughty’ also slammed the misinformation being spread by the group of protesters.

“I see that there have been various posts suggesting that Alfie will be “given a lethal injection” and that the proposed end of life care plan has been made public and described as an “execution plan”,” he said.

“This is simply wrong. The purpose of palliative care is to allow death with some degree of dignity. The drugs proposed, midazolam and fentanyl, are a sedative and an analgesic respectively. They are not “lethal”; without these drugs, when intensive care were withdrawn he would have a far more distressing, uncomfortable and undignified death without them.

“The fundamental point of disagreement still remains that medical professionals and the judges who have appraised the evidence feel that there is no chance of recovery whilst Alfie’s family still believe there is. I do not accept any preposterous conspiracy theories about the “establishment” trying to “cover up mistakes” and “murder” him.

“Yes, I have no doubt that some aspects of care might have been better (this applies to any patient ever looked after anywhere) and some mistakes may have been made. If so, professionals have duty of candour to be open about these. However to suggest that Alder Hey want to “execute” Alfie is just absurd and it is desperately disappointing that people seem to believe this so firmly that they have behaved as they have today.

“Enshrined in U.K. law is that all actions have to be in the best interests of a child and that it is ethical to withdraw treatment if it is felt that continuing interventions would simply prolong suffering if there was no prospect of recovery. The thought of a child dying is horrible but the sad facts of life are that this happens. The unedifying scenes in Liverpool today should cause extreme concern to all of us who look after sick children as trust between professionals and families is key to effective care and if this is a taste of the future then children may suffer in the future.”