He doesn’t need a GP! What receptionist told mum of toddler ‘with worst ever chicken pox’
A BOY struck down with the worst chickenpox his doctors had ever seen was denied a GP appointment by a receptionist who told his mother she was worrying unnecessarily.
Two-year- old Jasper Allen spent five days in hospital and had to be put on an intravenous drip and given morphine.
But just two days before he was admitted, his mother Sarah, 36, was refused a slot to see their local GP after being told: ‘Every mother thinks their child has bad chickenpox.’
She is now calling on ministers to make a vaccination against the disease free for all on the NHS. It is currently only available to certain children on medical grounds, though health chiefs are reviewing whether to extend this.
Chickenpox is usually a mild illness from which most children recover on their own.
Symptoms include a high temperature, aches and pains, and a rash of blisters which fade within two weeks.
But the severity of Jasper’s sores – which covered every inch of his body – and the fact that they’d become infected meant he needed to be seen by a medical professional.
Mrs Allen said that when she first called their local surgery, she was told Jasper could not have a slot to see a doctor.
She said: ‘I spoke to the receptionist to make an appointment, but when I told her it was chickenpox she said to me, “every mother thinks their child has bad chickenpox”.’
‘To see it take over his body was heartbreaking’
The nursery manager, from St Neots, Cambridgeshire, said: ‘I was one of those parents who couldn’t wait for my two to get chickenpox so then it was out of the way – I didn’t think there was any harm in letting him get it.
‘But to see him get it like that and see how it took over his body was just heartbreaking.
‘Nearly every child I’ve ever had in my care has had chickenpox at some point, but never like this. It was definitely not “just chickenpox” and I want people to realise this.’
Mrs Allen said the hospital doctors were astounded at the severity of her little boy’s condition. ‘ Everyone’s reactions in the hospital were just complete shock over how severe it was – the doctors all wanted to come and see this worst ever case of chickenpox,’ she said.
‘There was even talk about using the pictures for a medical journal. One of the paediatric nurses with 40 years’ experience said she had never seen anything like it.
‘ It shouldn’t have affected a healthy two-year-old as badly as it did – imagine how it could have affected a child with a compromised immune system.’
Mrs Allen, who also has a daughter Poppy, five, with her postman husband Keith Allen, 38, noticed a few spots on Jasper’s body in July after the toddler developed scarlet fever the week before.
The following morning he had ‘hundreds’ of spots, but when Mrs Allen called her local GP surgery to book him an appointment, she said she was rebuffed by the receptionist and told it wouldn’t be necessary.
The next day, as Jasper’s temperature continued to rise, the mother took her son to the same GP surgery and he was prescribed antibiotics for an infection.
Several hours later his condition had not improved so she visited A&E at Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, where he was quickly admitted on to the children’s ward and spent five days receiving treatment.
Mrs Allen wants the Government to make the chickenpox vaccina- tion part of the NHS’s routine childhood immunisation programme. ‘We are one of the only countries who do not routinely vaccinate against chickenpox – Europe, the USA and Australia all now do,’ she said.
A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘The vaccine is not routinely offered to children although the Government’s expert vaccination advisors are reviewing this.’
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