Vaccination campaign: Anti-vaccination movement triggers resurgence of deadly disease

A DEVASTATING disease that kills newborn babies is making a re-emergence as a result of the anti-vaccination movement.

Taylor Oldfield and her 15-month-old daughter Cali. Picture Sam Ruttyn

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A DEVASTATING disease that kills newborn babies is making a re-emergence as a result of the anti-vaccination movement.

Thousands of babies are being denied the routine vitamin K post-birth injection, which protects them from newborn haemorrhagic disease, because their parents are refusing consent under the ­advice of some health workers, including midwives.

Newborn haemorrhagic disease, which is caused by a deficiency in vitamin K, has killed six babies in the past two decades, including one in 2013 and another in 2012.

The Sunday Telegraph can reveal there were six babies taken to hospital for the condition in 2013. The parents refused consent in five of the cases.

Lismore paediatrician Dr Chris ­Ingall said he had cared for a one-month-old baby that died of haemorrhaging on the brain in 2010 because the mother had been told by a midwife not to get the shot.

“One of the hardest things a paediatrician ever has to do is tell a patient their baby is going to die and in this case, the mother had refused the vitamin K injection for her newborn just a few weeks prior,” Dr Ingall says.

“She said it can’t be vitamin K deficiency, and I said ‘I’m sorry but the tests show the baby is deficient’,” Dr Ingall says. It was later confirmed by the coroner.

Dr Ingall said he wanted a coronial inquiry into the case, which occurred seven years ago, because the mother had been advised against getting the vitamin K shot for her baby by a community health midwife in Byron Bay.

Dr Ingall said once a week he had to try to convince new parents to give the vitamin K shot because they had wrongly been told it was dangerous.

He said the homebirth and anti-vaccine movement were consistently involved.

The rogue midwife was ­removed from the local area health service after official complaints but Dr Ingall said he saw a constant stream of new parents continuing to ­reject the shot for their baby.

The disease used to kill about 15 newborn babies a year in NSW in the late 1960s and early 1970s before routine vitamin K injections for ­newborns reduced the incidence to near zero.