Parents admit to influence of anti-vax social media posts after child rushed to ICU

Doctors have warned about the dangers of anti-vaccine misinformation spread on social media, after a 13-month-old baby boy contracted a serious illness because his parents refused to vaccinate the him.

The child, who hasn't been named for privacy reasons, ended up in intensive care at University Hospital Galway in Ireland after his parents rushed him to the emergency department when he started having trouble breathing.

The child was described as being "in significant respiratory distress" in Epi-Insight, a report from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) in Ireland, and was admitted to the ICU.

It was later discovered that he had contracted a vaccine-preventable disease, with blood tests identifying the infant had bacterium haemophilus influenza, which can cause serious infections in children.

The baby was put on a 10-day course of intravenous antibiotics which improved his condition before he developed any more life-threatening symptoms.

During the boy's time in hospital his parents admitted that while they were "well informed" on the risks and dangers of vaccine-preventable illnesses, they had chosen not to have their son vaccinated.

They confessed that their choice was largely based on social media posts that claimed vaccines like the MMR vaccine had been linked to autism, despite there being no scientific evidence of this.

The original paper that proposed a link between vaccines and autism has been debunked multiple times and its author, Andrew Wakefield, was banned from practicing medicine after it was revealed that he had falsified much of the data in the study.

However these parents, like many others who refuse to vaccinate their children, had been swayed by social media misinformation that doctors warn is becoming more and more dangerous.

Dr Edina Moylett, consultant paediatrician and lecturer at NUI Galway, and Dr Peter Tormey of UHG stated in the Epi-Insight reported that the growing rate of misinformation spread on social media has influenced many parents' decisions not to vaccinate.

They warned that "anti-vaccination sentiment can often prevail" over genuine medical information on social media and reminded parents that they should be getting their information from credible sources, not Facebook pages.

It's not the first time experts have warned of the dangers of anti-vaccine sentiment being spread online.

US teen Ethan Lindenberger chose to get vaccinated against his mother's wishes, and later told Congress that she and many other parents who refuse to vaccinate get most of their information from anti-vax Facebook groups and other social media sites.