A six-month-old baby has died of meningococcal B just two hours after falling ill.
Baby Jordan Braddock from Mount Gambier, South Australia, went to bed as normal on Saturday night smiling and enjoying his bottle.
On Sunday morning his parents noticed we has quiet and listless so rushed him to their GP who advised they go to emergency.
Not long after arriving at the hospital a rash started forming on Jordan’s tiny body. As medics made plans to rush him to hospital in Adelaide, Jordan took his last breath.
Tragically, he’d died from the disease within two hours of the tell-tale rash forming.
Paying tribute to their boy on Facebook, his dad Doc Braddock said: ‘Why us, it’s so cruel.’
Doc told that’s life! the young family had no idea of the risk posed by meningococcal B, and he called for the jab to be routinely given to all babies.
‘The jab is expensive, but like anything involving your kids’ health, you wouldn’t hesitate, you’d get it done. We’d heard of whooping cough and had the jab for that, but we simply didn’t know about this disease.’
Doc added his family could afford the jabs, but he wanted the government to make sure every child was protected.
Friends have rallied for people to donate to a Go Fund Me to pay for Jordan’s funeral.
The meningococcal B vaccine isn’t free on the national immunisation programme, meaning Australian parents have to use their own money to pay for the costly vaccines. Most babies receive the meningococcal C vaccine at 12 months but this doesn’t protect them against all five strains – A,B,C,W and Y.
In order to get their babies vaccinated against all five strains, parents have to fork out up to $500, unaffordable for many low income families.
that’s life! magazine is asking people to sign the petition for their Protect Our Kids campaign to get the federal government to include all meningococcal vaccines on the PBS.
Baby Riley Nixon from Adelaide almost died after contracting meningococcal B in 2016 and lost his legs and hands due to the disease.
His mum Amy Wales didn’t know that Riley wasn’t fully protected from meningococcal B as she thought the C vaccine would fully cover him from the disease.
She also urged people to sign the Protect Our Kids campaign petition.
She added: ‘This vaccine should be on the list of free vaccines, so no more families have to go through what we have.
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