A blight on our Christmas as medics fight to keep our children safe

Something called Strep A infection threatens our children and we can do very little to stop the invasion. The picture of Stella–Lily McCorkindale is on the front pages. The smiling little five year old fell ill with a Strep A infection and was sent home from the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children twice in the days before she died. Her distraught dad Robert told the media he knew she wasn’t well but `stupidly listened to the doctors’ who had sent her home with advice to `drink Lucozade Sport’. When the reality hit the medics it was too late.

To lose a child through something totally out of the blue is beyond comprehension. But our Health Service, whilst worthy of great respect, is not perfect and in the current climate when it is swimming in debt with staff threatening to strike, we can only weep that all ages, from the youngest up, are at risk. Christmas will never be the same again for the McCorkindale family, their loss is so great.

My mother was training as a children’s nurse in England back in the 1920’s and she told us many stories of children dying of all manner of illnesses they knew so little about back then.

Like all women of that generation she gave up her career on marriage and started her own family. I was her fourth child and I remember the caution she exercised with us when various illnesses struck down children in our locality. Mercifully she didn’t lose any of us though child deaths then were common – diphtheria, measles, flu, whooping cough and perhaps worst of all polio. I remember the fear that particular illness instilled in our community. My mother knew instinctively not to let us mix with other children. Of course we did get sick now and then and she never slept if one of us had gone down with something.

Medical science moved on and vaccinations have ensured that children are as safe now as they can be. But once in a while something raises its ugly head and this time it is a Strep A infection just at a time when Northern Ireland it seems is short of penicillin the drug used for such infections.

I couldn’t get a much needed medical appointment this week as a result of the crisis. Our children come first; they are precious and everything has to be done to protect them even if that means opening up vaccination centres on Christmas Eve. What I don’t understand though is why the authorities didn’t see this coming. Too late for Stella-Lily.