Two parents experienced the unthinkable when their unvaccinated six-year-old child died from measles last month, but vow that their four other children would still ‘absolutely not take’ the vaccine in spite of what happened.
When the little girl first became sick, it seemed pretty clear that it was measles as other children in the community had it.
Two days after her rash appeared, she was taken to the doctor and given something for her cough, before being sent home with instructions to give her Tylenol to combat the fever.
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Speaking to the Children’s Health Defense (CHD) - a non-profit organisation known for its anti-vaxx stance - the unnamed mother recalled: “Then I just noticed one morning that she was saying she was getting very tired and I was just noticing her breathing wasn’t normal.
“And that’s when we just decided to go to the emergency [room] and get it checked out.”
When they got to hospital, staff asked if the girl was vaccinated with the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine. Her parents confirmed she wasn’t.
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After it was determined she had pneumonia, the child was transferred to intensive care and put on a ventilator, before later being sedated and intubated.
Sadly, she never woke up.
Doctors had tried putting the girl on life support, but to no avail.
“They told us to go back into the waiting room and wait there until they were done with whatever they were doing to put her on life support,” the mother continued.
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“But it didn’t take very long for the doctor to come back in there and he just said that she was probably too sick to put her on life support and her brain was probably already passed away anyway.”
The parents revealed that their four remaining children also came down with measles shortly after the six-year-old died.
However, despite what happened to their daughter, they remain adamant that they will not vaccinate their other kids.
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The pair claimed that their other kids had a ‘really good quick recovery’, adding: “We would absolutely not take the MMR. The measles wasn’t that bad. They [the four children] got over it pretty quickly.”
When asked what they would say to other parents about the MMR vaccine, the mother argued that the measles is not as bad as the media makes out.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been two suspected measles-related deaths so far this year in the US – one confirmed, and one currently under investigation.
There have been 301 cases, 95 percent of which have unvaccinated or ‘unknown’ status.
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A total of 17 percent (50) of the cases have required hospitalisation, with children making up more than a third (37 percent).
Jess Hardiman