Ashya King, the five-year-old cancer patient whose parents sparked an international hunt when they took him from hospital in Britain, arrived in Prague this morning for treatment after leaving Spain.
"I can confirm that Ashya King has arrived in Prague," Jana Kulhankova, spokesman for the Czech capital's Proton Therapy Centre said.
Earlier today, Czech doctors expressed concern that Ashya's parents, who are Jehovah's Witnesses, could object to a necessary blood transfusion.
The boy has been in the middle of a week-long legal saga that began when his parents took him out of a British hospital against medical advice.
It triggered a cross-border manhunt that saw them briefly jailed in Spain.
The case dominated British news, with public opinion shifting from outrage to sympathy as it became clear parents Brett King, 51, and his wife Neghemeh King, 45, had taken their son abroad to avoid treatment they believed would turn him into a "vegetable".
The parents spent four days in a Spanish jail and although they were released after British prosecutors dropped their case, they could not move him from a hospital in Spain until his status as a ward of court, imposed after they were imprisoned, was lifted.
Ashya, who has a brain tumour, will be treated in a Czech centre specialising in proton beam therapy, the treatment his parents sought for him but that was unavailable to them in Britain.
The Proton Therapy Centre (PTC) in Prague said at the weekend its experts would fast-track its procedures for the young patient.
Proton beam therapy, which is more precise than traditional radiotherapy, allows doctors to deliver higher doses of energy to a tumour while better sparing surrounding healthy tissue.
According to the PTC, the procedure costs about €65,000 in the Czech Republic, compared with €108,000 in the United States.
The Kings have said they will sell an apartment in Malaga to fund Ashya's treatment.
Ashya recently underwent brain tumour surgery in Southampton, in southern England, but his parents took him from the hospital there after disagreeing with his treatment.
The lead paediatrician at Southampton hospital did not believe that the alternative therapy would help rid the boy of his cancer.
