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Transcript: Whooping cough – a baby’s struggle

[Audio of Sativah coughing.]

Stacey Illingworth, Sativah’s mother:

I woke up on the twelfth of July, five o’clock in the morning, to Sativah not breathing. When I realised she wasn’t breathing I put her on the floor and gave her CPR. The ambulance came and took over and proceeded us over here to the hospital. She was admitted to ICU where she stayed for a night because her heart stopped.

[Audio of Sativah coughing.]

Betsy Smith, Clinical Nurse Manager, Waikato Hospital:

The present baby we’ve got in with us at the moment has been one of the sickest I’ve ever seen – but she’s also been one of the youngest that we’ve ever had in the ward.

[Audio of Sativah coughing.]

She has been too young to have been immunised, so she was severely compromised by both her age and whooping cough itself.

[Audio of Sativah coughing, and being patted on the back.]

Anybody that could see this would immunise their child with whooping cough. This has been a particularly harrowing experience – it’s been horrible watching Sativah at times gasping for breath. It really has. And to see the trauma to her family, that was awful. Her mother and father were really really distraught to watch their child, and to be so helpless.

[Audio of Sativah coughing.]

Stacey Illingworth:

Well, I think everybody should be immunised. And people that are sick or have a cough or anything like that shouldn’t be around newborn babies, regardless of, you know, family or not, because this is the outcome of it all. They’re not old enough to be immunised at that age, and they don’t have a chance, really.

I could have lost Sativah that morning, and again here. And that’s pretty sad really.

But immunisation is a big thing, and adults need to be immunised too, for this, because we are the carriers.

Acknowledgements:
Our grateful thanks to Waikato District Health Board and Stacey Illingworth for sharing this video of baby Sativah Lammas.

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Page last updated: 20 August 2012