Personal Experiences
“Our lives would be different if we’d had the chance to vaccinate our child.”1
Many parents debate the wisdom of vaccination – but for Boeta's family, of Limpopo Province, there’s no debate at all. If they could do it all over again – if a vaccine was available this time round, they would choose in a heartbeat to vaccinate their child against pneumococcal disease. They know what the price of not vaccinating is – because they’re paying it every day.
When he was just four months old, their son Boeta contracted meningitis. At first the doctors thought he had a cold, but he soon become feverish. Again the family was assured that it was only a cold that had turned into middle-ear infection. The symptoms of meningitis can be difficult to diagnose, which is why Boeta’s condition wasn’t correctly diagnosed for a few days – and by then, the damage had been done. Boeta’s brain had been damaged. Sitting by his bedside in hospital, praying for his recovery, the Niemann family knew it was touch and go. Gently, but firmly, doctors advised them that their son was brain dead, and counselled them to switch off the life-support machines that kept Boeta breathing. Bacterial meningitis is the 10th greatest cause of death in children under five in South Africa.2 One in five children who contract pneumococcal meningitis don’t survive.3
Rene, Boeta’s mother, remembers that day so clearly: “I just prayed and prayed and asked please can my son come home one day …” Thankfully her prayers were answered. Boeta was a fighter and after the machines were turned off, he kept breathing. After two long operations to drain the fluid from his brain, and a full two months in hospital, Boeta was allowed home with his parents. He’s not the child he once was – meningitis has left him physically handicapped, blind, unable even to sit without help, paralysed on his left side and with permanent brain damage.
Today, Boeta needs constant, expensive medical attention, an emotional and financial strain on the family that love him and care for him. He’ll never go to school, never leave home, never have a career or a family of his own – he’ll always need special care, and he will always live either with his parents or in a home. Rene, his mother, says: “I want our story to be told and heard by other parents who have the chance to act now while they can. I wish there had been a pneumococcal vaccine available for Boeta, but there wasn’t. And although he’s still with us and we love him and care for him, Boeta is the one who is suffering. I would urge every parent to protect their child as much as they can.”
While it might be too late for Rene to go back, it’s not too late for you.
Pneumococcal diseases are responsible for the deaths of more than 1 million children every year.4 Serious diseases often caused by pneumococci include pneumonia, meningitis and bacteraemia (an infection of the blood). More common but less serious manifestations of Pneumococcal infection include otitis media, sinusitis and bronchitis.4 Some of these infections can lead to hearing loss, some to paralysis and others to death – and children of all ages are at risk.
However, there is now a vaccine available from Wyeth, which over a 3-year trial in the US, proved to have a high overall efficacy rate of 97.4%.5 The vaccine is suitable for children and infants from 6 weeks to 9 years old.5 In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS) recently decided to make pneumococcal vaccination routinely available for all infants and children.6 So, why wouldn’t you vaccinate?
- Interview with the Niemann Family
- Bradshaw D., Bourne D., Nannan N. What are the leading causes of death among South Africa children. MRC Policy Brief 2003; 3. (Unpublished data).
- Department of Health, Chief Medical Officer. Preventing meningitis. 7 December 2006. http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Aboutus/MinistersandDepartment
Leaders/ChiefMedicalOfficer/ProgressOnPolicy/Progress
BrowsableDocument/DH_4102788 (Accessed: 14 November 2007).
- World Health Organization. Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine for childhood immunization – WHO position paper. Weekly Epidemiological Record 2007; 82(12): 93 - 104.
- Prevenar package insert
CMO Letter, Important Changes to the Childhood Immunisation Programme, 12th July 2006.
www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Lettersandcirculars/Professionalletters/
Chiefnursingofficerletters/DH_4137172. (Accessed 26 November 2007).
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