Hi my name is Amy and i wanted to share with all you mums the tragic story of the loss of my beautiful, 19 month old daughter Freya.
I feel i need to get across to as many people as possible information on this 'HIDDEN' Meningitis which took away my baby girl.
Pneumococcal meningitis is never really talked about and parents of often ignorant to this terrible form of meningitis.
Pneumococcal is a severe form of bacterial meningitis which is more common in the under 2's.
Children don't usually get the so called 'RASH' with this strain which is why it is so hard to diagnose.
Freya became ill with a high temperature and vomiting on 5th April 2005 and was seen by my GP who said she needed parecetemol but Freya became very drowsy so we took her to hospital where she began to have seizures. We were transferred to our local PICU where Freya suffered kidney failure and irreversible brain damage, she died in her daddy?s arms 11 days later.
As all this was happening i was 28 weeks pregnant with my second daughter Libby who was born only 8 weeks after her big sister died.
Our lives have been torn apart after the loss of our precious little girl but the real kick in the teeth was that Freya's life could have been saved as there is a vaccine called Prevenar that protects children from the pneumococcal disease.
Prevenar has been used in the USA for over 5 years but still our government has yet to introduce it.
I hope this will make all parents more aware that this disease exists and that there is a vaccine to protect your children.
50 children a year die from this infection, in my eyes 50 is too many. something needs to be done before more lives are shattered.
Libby is 4 months old now and is about to have her third prevenar tomorrow.