Sick girl, 7, not vaccinated
AN unvaccinated seven-yearold girl is fighting for life after she caught tetanus while playing in the garden of her northern NSW home.
Doctors and vaccination advocates said the case was a wake-up call for the north coast region, which has some of the lowest immunisation rates in Australia.
The girl, who was last night in a critical condition at Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital in Brisbane, was initially treated at Lismore Base Hospital after she started showing symptoms of the potentially fatal disease.
“She was suffering very painful spasms to her body and jaw muscles,” paediatrician Dr Chris Ingall said.
The girl probably picked up the disease, which is transmitted by bacteria in soil, through an open wound on her foot.
“It’s just very, very sad that a trivial injury can lead to having tetanus in this day and age when vaccination is the key to preventing it,” Dr Ingall said.
There is no cure for tetanus. Cases are extremely rare in Australia. “This is a standout I hoped I would never see in my time,” Dr Ingall said.
“It’s incredibly frustrating and my only hope is that this incident turns the tide for people who do have different belief systems.”
The case comes in the same week American anti-vaccination advocate David Wolfe FROM the “Candyshop mansion” to the courtroom, provocative tobacco tycoon Travers Beynon consistently surrounds himself with a bevy of women.
And it was three women, a court heard, that he allegedly sent to a Hope Island coffee shop 18 months ago to give his recently sacked lieutenant a “hard time”.
Former “Candyshop Mansion goddess” Parnia Marshall yesterday took the stand in the Federal Court in Brisbane.
Mr Beynon is fighting legal action from former Free-choice general manager Andrew Whelan over his dismissal in August 2015. held a sold-out seminar in the nearby town of Mullumbimby.
Alison Gaylard, from the Northern Rivers Vaccination Supporters, criticised Byron Shire Council for allowing the controversial speaker to use the Mullumbimby Civic Hall on Thursday.
“It just seems tragic that while he could have been talk- ing about his stance on vaccinations, there was an unvaccinated child being hospitalised with such an easily preventable disease,” Ms Gaylard said on Friday.
Byron Shire Council’s director of corporate and community services, Mark Arnold, said the council did not have a position on vaccination.