BEN LANGFORD
NTNews.com.au
05/07/2010
A DARWIN woman has told of her week of trauma after her young son contracted a blood disease after being vaccinated for swine flu.
Karama mum Amanda de Vries said she is convinced the illness came from a complication associated with the vaccine.
She came forward to tell her story after more than 100 young children in Western Australia had bad reactions to the seasonal flu vaccine, often including fever and convulsions.
The vaccine has been banned for children under 5.
Ms de Vries said her son Jayke, who was nine years at the time, came down with a severe fever around Christmas last year, two days after the H1N1 vaccination.
After tests at Royal Darwin Hospital could not diagnose the illness, Jayke was flown to Melbourne.
Doctors said it could be leukaemia, or even HIV, but could not find the cause.
Ms de Vries and her two other children were also vaccinated at the same time but only Jayke became ill.
Jayke recovered after two weeks.
Ms de Vries suspects it may have been an interaction with an earlier exposure to glandular fever or parvovirus but doctors were unable to give her an answer.
Ms de Vries said the experience meant she would not let her children get vaccinated any more.
“I don’t believe we know the whole story on the side effects, and do the side effects for some people outweigh the good for everyone?” she said. “I’ll never know (for sure) if it was the vaccine. But I’ll never take the chance.”
Health department spokesman Robin Osborne said the case would be followed up with the family.
“Adverse reactions to vaccinations are recorded and investigated,” he said.
NT Centre for Disease Control director Vicki Krause said there had not been further reports of children in the Territory coming down with fevers after flu vaccination.