Medical Bastardry

I just received a call from the mother of a 2 year old boy. This woman has been a member of the AVN for a couple of years and is very well informed about both vaccination and health - as are most of our members.

Her son was recently hospitalised with what turned out to be salmonella (the department of health is pretty sure that he was exposed to this via food he was given on the airplane going on holiday recently). As a result, he became very dehydrated and needed to be brought to hospital.

The mother was in the emergency room with him for over 20 hours before he was admitted and by then, she was extremely tired with looking after this sick little boy all that time.

About an hour after they were brought to the hospital room, the hospital paediatrician came in to check on the boy. The first thing he said when he looked at the child's chart was, "You know, if your son had been vaccinated, he never would have gotten salmonella."

The mother was confused, as you can imagine! She was also at her most vulnerable with worrying about her son and lack of sleep.

"Oh." she said to the doctor. "I didn't know that salmonella was part of the childhood vaccination schedule."

"Yes," said the doctor. "It's part of the DPT vaccine."

The mind boggles! Either this doctor really believes that DPT stands for salmonella vaccine or he was just out and out lying to try and bully this mother. Either way, he is being incredibly irresponsible trying to speak in this way to a woman whose child is very ill!

The mother is considering filing a complaint with the hospital about her treatment and I think she should.

Just because someone is a doctor is no reason for them to treat anyone like this. Especially when he is completely wrong in what he is saying!