4-Year-Old Iowa Girl Blinded After Contracting the Flu

Jade DeLucia, a 4-year-old from Iowa, is back home with her family after being struck with a case of the flu that, after a lengthy hospital stay, has left her blind. Amanda Phillips, the girl’s mother, told reporters that Jade came down with a fever in mid-December, which she initially controlled with medication. “There wasn’t any sign that would’ve told me that something was seriously wrong with her,” Phillips told CNN. Phillips did not immediately respond to TIME’s request for comment. Jade had been vaccinated earlier in 2019, according to a post Phillips wrote on Facebook. But, she adds, she didn’t know she was supposed to vaccinate her daughter again at the start of the new flu season. Last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended the flu vaccine be administered at the end of October, but that can vary from year to year to better fight against the viruses expected to circulate in a given season. “I’m a mother doing the best I can to raise kind, honest, loving little humans,” Phillips wrote. On Christmas Eve, Jade was found unresponsive and flown to the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with influenza B and placed her in the hospital’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, according to a GoFundMe set up to help the family with medical expenses, and confirmed to TIME by Dr. Theresa Czech, one of the pediatric neurologists at the...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Iowa onetime public health Source Type: news