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Stephen Donovan
Stephen came home from school on Thursday 7th January 2000 complaining of a sore throat and feeling a bit off-colour. A week into the new millennium, the country was in the grip of a flu epidemic and everyone seemed to have some sort of health complaint. As Stephen did seem quite poorly, his mother called out the doctor, who recommended an early night, and to be kept under observation.
Stephen's father, Steve had an early morning meeting in London and was called out for an urgent phone call at 7.30am. Steve remembers "I couldn't imagine what it was, but I knew it must be fairly important that someone had tracked me down at that time in the morning."
The news wasn't good. Stephen had been rushed into Mayday Hospital in Croydon with suspected meningitis. The doctors tried to stabilise Stephen's condition, and a specialist team was in from Guys Hospital London. Stephen was given a 20% chance of surviving the rest of the day. The decision was made to move him to St Thomas's Hospital.
Steve said it was difficult to take it all in.
"We were sat in a room, like you see on the television waiting for news. Nurses would rush in saying 'I think we're over the crisis' only for another crisis to follow. All of his internal organs except his liver had packed up, and he had three cardiac arrests. A doctor came in and told us that Stephen may lose his limbs and suggested they use a new blood filtering machine from Germany. I just said 'whatever. Do whatever you want'."
Despite every effort being made to stabilise Stephen's condition, there was nothing more that could be done. At around 5.00am on Friday 8th January less than 12 hours after being rushed into hospital, Stephen passed away.
Eight months later, Steve is coming to terms with the loss of his youngest son. Stephen was 14 when he died from Group C meningococcal disease. With limited stocks of the vaccine available initially, those most at risk were vaccinated first, and Stephen's age group were due to be included later in the programme. Steve knows that if he'd had the vaccine, Stephen would probably be here today.
