Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Kind Habiba, 9, killed by one ice cream lick
Dad confirmed three times snack was safe
A BIG-HEARTED schoolgirl died of an allergic reaction after a single lick of ice cream, an inquest heard.
Nine-year-old Habiba Chishti had just begun a family holiday on the Costa del Sol when she suffered the fatal reaction.
Her father Dr Wajid Azam Chishti told an inquest yesterday how the nightmare began on the day the family arrived.
Dr Chishti, of Halifax, West Yorks, said he bought Habiba an ice cream after checking three times with the vendor that the sauce was nut-free.
He said: “Habiba took one lick and she was absolutely fine at the time, but that’s all it took.”
He said Habiba felt ill in a restaurant that night, in February 2019, so the family went to their hotel, the Club La Costa World in Mijas. Habiba displayed none of the “classical signs of anaphylaxis”, he added.
She was rushed to Malaga Hospital, where she died two days later. A postmortem revealed Habiba had lethal doses of peanuts, almonds, hazelnuts, cashews and pistachios in her system.
Dr Chishti said: “We called the ambulance, I did CPR myself. The ambulance seemed to take forever, but it was 11 minutes. It felt like it was a long time.” The paramedics would not let anyone else into the ambulance, he said, which he considered to be “very bizarre”.
Dr Chishti, a dentist, Habiba’s mum Nadia and Habiba’s older brother and younger sister took a taxi to see her.
He said it was only hours later that a hospital doctor came to talk to them.
Dr Chishti added to the inquest in Bradford coroner’s court: “We have emergency training every year. It’s so scary... we have all this training but it’s no use when there are no symptoms.
“With all the knowledge from everything you learned, it feels like it’s doubly worse.”
Dr Chishti said the family used to go on holidays twice a year but that he could no longer face them. He also said he now volunteered for a Gambian charity because Habiba had wanted him to.
Assistant coroner Katy Dickinson recorded a narrative conclusion, saying of Habiba: “On balance she died as a result, and despite medical intervention, from anaphylactic shock.”
She added: “She sounds like a lovely girl with a big heart. A kind little girl.”