Palermo, 20 August (LaPresse) – A four-year-old girl died last night at Palermo’s Civico Hospital from diphtheria, a disease that had been eradicated in Italy for more than 10 years. The little girl, the daughter of anti-vaxxers, had not been vaccinated immediately after birth at her parents’ request. According to what they told the doctors, they were convinced that the vaccine caused autism. The little girl arrived in a serious condition on Saturday at the Cervello Hospital in Palermo; she was intubated and, as her condition continued to deteriorate, was transferred to the intensive care unit at the Ospedale dei Bambini. There, the doctors did everything they could to save her. In a last-ditch effort, they transferred her to the cardiac surgery department to connect her to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine. Diphtheria – as the Ministry of Health points out – is an acute, potentially fatal, notifiable infectious disease caused by toxin-producing strains belonging to the species Corynebacterium diphtheriae. Rare in industrialised countries but endemic in other parts of the world, there have been five reported cases in Italy since 2000.
Palermo: 4-year-old girl dies of diphtheria; she had not been vaccinated
Palermo, 20 August (LaPresse) – A four-year-old girl died last night at Palermo’s Civico Hospital from diphtheria, a disease that had been eradicated in Italy for more than 10 years. The little girl, the daughter of anti-vaxxers, had not been vaccinated immediately after birth at her parents’ request. According to what they told the doctors, they were convinced that the vaccine caused autism. The little girl arrived in a serious condition on Saturday at the Cervello Hospital in Palermo; she was intubated and, as her condition continued to deteriorate, was transferred to the intensive care unit at the Ospedale dei Bambini. There, the doctors did everything they could to save her. In a last-ditch effort, they transferred her to the cardiac surgery department to connect her to an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine. Diphtheria – as the Ministry of Health points out – is an acute, potentially fatal, notifiable infectious disease caused by toxin-producing strains belonging to the species Corynebacterium diphtheriae. Rare in industrialised countries but endemic in other parts of the world, there have been five reported cases in Italy since 2000.