Illness took Eibhlín after 12 days
JOHN and Louise Wills’s baby daughter Eibhlín was just 12 days old when she died from a cold sore.
The cause of her death was the herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1), more commonly known as the cold sore virus.
The type that killed Eibhlín results in multiple organ failure – but there are no symptoms until it is too late.
While this type of death is rare, the circumstances in Eibhlín’s case are even rarer – as 90% of these infections come from the mother, but Louise was tested and found not to have carried the virus.
Eibhlín Gráinne Wills was born at 9.29am on Thursday, November 19, 2015, in the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin by an emergency C-section.
She weighed a healthy 7lb 11oz and was nine days overdue.
She was later transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit as a precautionary measure because she had become a little distressed prior to delivery.
After five nights in hospital she went home on the afternoon of Tuesday, November 24. A few days later she was a little out of sorts but by the following morning she was back sleeping well.
As that day went on she seemed a bit congested, but there was no cause for alarm until 11pm when her colour suddenly changed and she became listless. John and Louise went straight to Tallaght Hospital’s A&E. Eibhlín was pronounced dead there on December 1, 2015.
John and Louise later discovered that acquiring accurate statistics on newborn babies with the cold sore virus in Ireland is difficult. This is, in part, due to the fact that neonatal herpes is not a notifiable disease in Ireland.
The parents also set up a website, rememberingeibhlin.org, in their daughter’s memory and to raise awareness about the virus that killed her.