Hours after complaining of just minor symptoms, an Indiana kid passed away from what turned out to be a rare and deadly bacterial infection, according to his distraught mother.
When 8-year-old Liam Dahlberg complained of a headache at school in April, his mother, Ashlee Dahlberg, didn’t suspect something was amiss with her typically energetic and positive kid until the next morning, she revealed.
She hurried Liam to the hospital, where medical professionals determined that he had Haemophilus influenzae type b, commonly referred to as “H. flu” or “Hib,” which is incredibly lethal.
Although most infants are vaccinated against Hib, which is a bacterial illness rather than a virus, it is still possible to get it, particularly at younger and far older ages.
“Anybody that contracts it usually dies within 24 hours,” according to the heartbroken mother.
The 8-year-old’s brain and spinal cord were covered by the virus, according to an MRI.
Dahlberg disclosed, “Basically, at that point in time, there was nothing they could do.”
Less than twenty-four hours after Liam complained of a headache, he passed away.
“I would never wish this kind of pain on my worst enemy ever. It’s hard.” Dahlberg sobbed as she described the agonizing experience of losing her kid in an instant.
“To have sat there and listened to the doctors say, ‘You did everything right, there’s just nothing we could do,’ to lay there with him as they took him off life support, I can feel his little heartbeat fade away — there’s no words that can describe that pain.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, hyb infections can be “invasive,” meaning they can move to areas of the body that are normally germ-free.
The virus can lie dormant in healthy people’s throats and noses and is typically transmitted by respiratory droplets.
Hib can, however, enter the bloodstream through a compromised immune system or infected people, providing the bacteria with a route to the host’s organs.
According to Dr. Eric Yancy, an Indianapolis pediatrician who is knowledgeable about the fatal bacterial infection, Hib was “absolutely devastating” until immunizations were developed in 1985.
“If it didn’t kill the children within a very short period of time, it left many of them with significant complications,” Yancy stated.
Liam was vaccinated against Hib, according to Dahlberg, but Yancy clarified that her son most likely got it from a child who wasn’t immunized against the bacterial infection, which means that additional kids might be exposed.
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According to the Cleveland Clinic, “about 20,000 children younger than 5 had a severe Hib disease each year, and about 1,000 died” prior to the vaccine’s introduction for children and subsequently newborns in 1990.
Since 1991, the US has seen a sharp decline in Hib infection rates, which have fallen by over 99%. By 2019, there were 0.15 cases of Hib illness for every 100,000 children under the age of five.
According to the CDC, there were less than 50 cases documented in the United States in 2024.
To guarantee that other families never have to suffer the same loss, Dahlberg is advising parents to make sure their kids are vaccinated against Hib.
The distraught mother remarked, “I feel like I have failed my child because I could not protect him from everything that would cause harm.”
