Dying in his parents’ arms, boy of 7 with meningitis
Couple release picture to back jab campaign
CRADLED in his par- ents’ arms, Mason Timmins is pictured in the moments before he succumbs to meningitis B.
The seven-year- old died just 24 hours after falling ill, prompting his parents to release pictures of him as a warning of the dangers of the deadly illness.
They have added their voices to a campaign to roll out vaccinations for all children and hope that the heartbreaking images inspire other parents to protect their children.
An online petition calling on the Government to vaccinate everyone under the age of 11 became the most popular in parliamentary history last week having gathered more than 650,000 signatories.
It gained huge public support after the parents of Faye Burdett, two, released pictures of their daughter who died from the bacterial infection on Valentine’s Day.
Inspired by the bravery of her parents in sharing the distressing images, Mason’s family decided to do the same.
Yesterday, his mother Claire, 37, from Walsall, West Midlands, said that she hoped no other parent would ever have to go through what she had.
‘They’re not very nice pictures, obviously,’ she said. ‘We had kept them in a box in the loft until we saw the heartbreaking photograph of Faye Burdett.
‘We thought if it’s going to make a difference we should use our photo as well. As soon as I mentioned it to my husband he said: “Yes, if it will get people to listen.” Hopefully it will shock people into finding out more about meningitis. We want people to know how quickly it can happen. Not everybody develops a rash. Mason didn’t.’
In December 2013, her son asked to watch television and then fell asleep, she recalled.
Government can’t ignore this
He woke at 6am and started vomiting, but Mrs Timmins, a teaching assistant, and her husband Mark, 49, a service engineer, thought he was getting better and let him sleep.
‘It all went downhill from there,’ she said. ‘We rushed him up to the doctors. They said it might be meningitis and got an antibiotic injection, warning he might scream.
‘But he never regained consciousness.’ Mason died 24 hours later in North Stafford- shire Hospital. ‘I remember that moment, two weeks before Christmas 2013, every day. I can talk without crying now, but my husband can’t,’ she told the Sunday Mirror. ‘He gets two or three words out and that’s it.
‘One nurse switched off the machine, the other removed the pipes and they put him on our lap and left us with him.
‘ We just kissed him and hugged him and wondered why this was happening. If one person reads this and decides to get the vaccination, then it has made a difference.’
Lee Booth, 44, from Newcastle, launched the petition calling for vaccinations for all children last September after he was told that one of his two young daughters was too old to have the vaccine on the NHS. His campaign had attracted around 900 signa- tures until Jenny and Neil Burdett, from Maidstone, Kent, shared pictures of their daughter Faye covered in a rash and lying in a hospital bed just before her death. More than 650,000 people have signed. Petitions with more than 100,000 signatures must be debated in Parliament.
British Gas worker Mr Booth said: ‘I’m overwhelmed. The Government cannot ignore the biggest petition ever.’ A vaccine to protect against meningitis B is available on the NHS for babies aged two months. Parents who wish to have older children vaccinated must pay privately but there is a worldwide shortage of the vaccine Bexsero.
Manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) hopes to have more by summer. The NHS programme is unaffected.
A two-year-old girl with suspected meningitis is critically ill after an ambulance rushing her to hospital in Oxfordshire crashed on the M40.