Mum Feared Child Would Die After Vaccine

Heath Donaldson

• Howick and Pakuranga Times

The Ministry of Health wants more Kiwi kids vaccinated to protect them from infectious diseases but some parents feel ill-informed when making choices.

A PARENT feared her child could have died when he suffered convulsions after receiving a flu jab.

Carolyn Flack had her one-year-old son vaccinated to protect him from influenza – but she never anticipated he would react in the way he did.

Within six hours of being vaccinated, little Heath started burning up and looking distressed, a scary and traumatic experience for any parent and not something expected after a routine trip to the doctor.

The febrile convulsion Heath suffered can occur in young children when their body temperatures start to increase rapidly.

Ms Flack was unaware this is a side effect of the vaccination and will ask more questions before giving her children influenza vaccines in the future.

“I’m pro-vaccine and coming from the UK you just don’t question it,” she told the Times. “I think there’s more of an anti-vaccine culture here.

“With swine flu there was a lot of publicity in Europe about under-fives being quite vulnerable.

“There was nothing in the information that Heath might have a reaction like this.”

Ms Flack took her two pre-school children Lara and Heath to a medical clinic for their annual flu jabs back on March 19.

They received Fluvax manufactured by CSL, which has been tested on children of the same age, according to a report in a Ministry of Health data sheet, which was published in November 2009.

“It was the combined swine flu and other strains of flu they have been recommending for under-fives,” says Ms Flack.

“Heath was fine until it came to his bath time.”

But he stood up in the bath and looked a bit unusual.

RECOVERED: Heath Donaldson, who experienced a febrile convulsion after his flu vaccine, with his mum Carolyn Flack and big sister Lara. Times photo Jackie Russell.

Ms Flack told her partner something wasn’t right and she took him out of the bath because she was concerned.

The convulsion did not last long but he was “very spaced out” and the episode frightened Ms Flack. Her children have never reacted so intensely to other vaccines.

“I took his temperature and it was 38.9 [degrees Celsius] and he was limp, so I rushed him to Botany East Care,” says Ms Flack. “I thought I had killed him.”

Although Ms Flack had given Heath paracetamol, which is recommended to reduce fever, the toddler’s temperature continued to rise.

During his ambulance trip to the paediatric emergency care department at Middlemore Hospital, Ms Flack thinks Heath’s temperature rose to 39.8 degrees Celsius.

The young lad’s medical record shows the primary diagnosis as febrile convulsion and the secondary diagnosis as flu immunisation.

Ms Flack contacted the Centre for Adverse Reactions Monitoring (CARM) and was concerned to discover Heath’s reaction to the flu vaccine had not been reported.

CARM director Dr Michael Tatley says there is no mandatory requirement in New Zealand to report adverse events to a national centre, which is a similar practice throughout the world.

“The prevailing practice is that anyone can report an event to us,” says Dr Tatley.

“It’s a voluntary system and it’s up to whoever believes it’s important enough to report the event to us.

“We get a diversity of events from mild things to fairly significant events.”

Data is reported to the Ministry of Health, which decides what action will be taken.

MORE than a month after Heath’s febrile convulsion the Ministry of Health’s (MoH) chief adviser on child and youth health, Dr Pat Tuohy, said: “There’s been a lot of focus on what we call febrile convulsions – a phrase that is probably new to most people, but which describes something which happens to about three to four per cent of children under the age of five.

“When they get a high fever, for whatever reason, those children have convulsions.

When the Times asked the MoH if Fluvax caused febrile convulsions in children the response was: “It would be incorrect to say that Fluvax ‘caused’ these convulsions – this is not yet established.” On April 23, the MoH said it was aware of reports that some children in Australia who have received the seasonal flu vaccine have experienced febrile convulsions. “There have also been some cases in New Zealand. All of the cases are linked to one of the vaccines, Fluvax.”New Zealand used Fluvax in March but supplies are likely to be very low as doctors shifted to a different supplier after Easter to meet demand.

As a sensible precaution, until further information is available from Australia, the MoH recommends doctors do not use Fluvax (made by CSL) for under-fives.

The most recent report (dated May 6, 2010) the MoH has received from CARM indicates 47 reactions have been reported in children aged five and under after having their flu vaccines – most of these reactions took the form of a mild fever.

The number of febrile convulsions within 24 hours of receiving the 2010 seasonal flu vaccine stands at four.

There is also one separate instance of a febrile convulsion within 24 hours of receiving the monovalent (containing antigens from a single strain of a micro organism) pandemic influenza vaccine. Given the increase in public awareness, the MoH anticipates the number of cases reported may increase. Some other cases of febrile convulsions are dealt with at a GP’s clinic, in primary care, or in the home – and do not show up in hospital figures.In looking at the data available to date, it does not appear there has been any increase in the total number of under-fives being presented to hospitals in Auckland for febrile convulsions this year, compared with corresponding months in recent years.

The MoH’s advice for New Zealand remains the same as it was on April 23. People, including under-fives, at risk of increased complications from flu should get a flu vaccine.

On April 23, Australia’s chief medical officer asked providers to stop giving under-fives the seasonal flu vaccine made by CSL after receiving reports of fever and convulsions in children in Western Australia who had recently been vaccinated.

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Mum feared child would die after jab