At 21, Ewan Jewell should be embarking on his first steps to full-adulthood and independence.
But he was left brain-damaged after catching whooping cough at just two weeks.
His mother Mel Jewell fears she gave him the ‘100-day cough’.
She feels ‘immense guilt’ and is urging all pregnant women to get vaccinated amid an ongoing outbreak which has killed six babies in the UK so far.
The mother-of-four claims she was never offered the jab while pregnant in 2002. An NHS scheme to roll out the jab to mothers-to-be wasn’t introduced until a decade later.
Mel Jewell said she feels ‘immense guilt’ for passing the whooping cough on to her son Ewan who was left brain-damaged by the infection as a baby
Ewan, who caught the infection at just two weeks needed to be placed on life support after his brain became starved of oxygen
He would spend months in the hospital, only being well enough to come home at three months of age
Mel, 48, who lives in Eastleigh, Hampshire, said Ewan’s condition was so bad she even started planning what he would wear for his funeral.
Despite making a ‘miraculous recovery’ as a baby, Ewan’s life was forever altered by the bacterial infection, medically called pertussis.
He stopped breathing for 15 minutes at a time, causing his brain to become starved of oxygen. He suffered permanent damage as a result.
Ewan cannot live independently, unable to perform simple tasks like using the microwave and has the reading age of a five-year-old.
Medics believe Ewan contracted the disease shortly after he was born, and while it cannot be proved, Mel – who got infected when she was eight months pregnant – too believes he caught it from her.
The business-owner said: ‘It felt awful. When you’ve carried a baby for nine months and you’re suddenly told you’re likely to lose your child.
‘I was thinking “how am I going to tell my two other children that their little baby brother was going to die?”
‘I was planning his funeral, in my head, like what he was going to wear, which is a bit crazy.
‘I wonder if I could have lived knowing my child had died because of me. It was like a dream really, I kept expecting to wake up.’
Ewan cannot live independently, unable to perform simple tasks like using microwave and had the reading age of a five-year-old
Mel urged all pregnant women to get a whooping cough vaccine amid fears a current outbreak could be the worst in 40 years sayin: ‘Just get vaccinated. The guilt: I feel so, so guilty. Every time Ewan annoys me, or is upset, I think “I’ve done this to my child; he’s brain damaged because of me”
Newborn Ewan was put on life support at Southampton General Hospital.
He would eventually be air-lifted to Leicester, where doctors took the dramatic step of hooking him up to a ventilator, a machine that effectively took over from his lungs, and supplied his body with oxygen.
Mel recalled: ‘When we got to Leicester, they said to us that “he will have some form of brain damage because of the amount of times he’d stopped breathing and all the drugs he was given to keep him alive”.
‘They said he could be severely brain damaged and, in a wheelchair, unable to speak.’
Ewan’s condition gradually improved and he was able to go home at three months old.
Looking back on her own nightmarish experience, Mel said she wanted to urge parents to get their whooping cough vaccination in the current outbreak.
‘To think there are parents going through what we went through, it’s unnecessary. I don’t think people are aware of how badly it can affect you,’ she said.
She said she was aware of rampant misinformation on social media regarding whooping cough and urged people to get vaccinated instead.
Health officials warned that the infection is initially difficult to tell apart from a cold, as the first signs are a runny nose and sore throat. But around a week later, sufferers may develop coughing bouts that last minutes, struggle to breathe after coughing and make a ‘whoop’ sound between coughs. Other signs of whooping cough include bringing up a thick mucus that can cause vomiting and becoming red in the face
‘Yesterday, I got a post from a friend that said, “if you’ve got whooping cough, have an onion drink and that will get rid of it”, I couldn’t believe that was supposed to be a remedy.
‘Just get vaccinated. The guilt: I feel so, so guilty. Every time Ewan annoys me, or is upset, I think “I’ve done this to my child; he’s brain damaged because of me”
‘I wouldn’t want any other mother to go through this.’
The whooping cough vaccination is routinely by the NHS for all pregnant women, ideally between 16 and 32 weeks pregnant, though it can be given up to the point of labour.
Doing so serves two purposes. Firstly, antibodies that can protect the baby from the infection pass through the placenta offering the newborn protection from whooping cough from birth and until they are old enough for their own vaccine.
Secondly, it reduces the chances of the mother catching whooping cough herself, and inadvertently passing it to her newborn baby.
The NHS states that babies whose mothers were vaccinated against whooping cough have a 91 per cent reduced chance of catching the infection compared to those born to unvaccinated mothers.
The whooping cough vaccine is considered incredibly safe and routinely offered to pregnant women throughout the world.
It comes amid fears the UK’s current whooping cough outbreak could be the worst in 40 years.
Nearly 3,000 cases of the infection, also called pertussis or the 100-day cough, have already been recorded in 2024. This is treble the levels seen across the entirety of 2023.
Nottingham, parts of Wales, Leeds and Sheffield appear to be the hotspots.
But it is widespread, only three of 330-plus districts across England and Wales have yet to report any suspected cases this year, MailOnline analysis reveals.
Whooping cough is contagious as measles – has killed five babies in the first quarter of 2024. All were under the age of three months.
Others have been left in 10 day comas from the infection.
Another victim, not yet included in the official toll, is Evie-Grace Lewis, who earlier this month at just 15 days old after catching whooping cough.
Heartbroken parents Reece and Caitlin say she ‘deteriorated so quickly’.
Her death means six babies have died in the current outbreak, making it the deadliest in a decade.
UK Health Security Agency bosses have blamed the current outbreak on a steady decline in the uptake of vaccines among expectant mums.
Experts say this is due to a mixture of vaccine hesitancy in the wake of Covid as well as a lack of awareness.
Just a quarter of expectant mothers have had the pertussis jab in some boroughs of London. Rates are below half in other parts of the capital and Birmingham.
Uptake of the six-in-one jab – offered to babies in the first four months of life – are also at an all-time low.
MailOnline understands that of the six babies known to have died of whooping cough in 2024, just two of their mothers were unvaccinated.
Whooping cough, spread through coughs and sneezes, can initially be difficult to tell apart from a cold, with the first signs typically being a runny nose and sore throat.
But around a week later, sufferers may develop coughing bouts which last minutes, struggle to breathe after coughing and make a ‘whoop’ sound between coughs.
Other signs of pertussis include bringing up a thick mucus that can cause vomiting and becoming red in the face.
Sufferers are infectious from around six days after cold-like symptoms begin to three weeks after their cough starts.
Doctors dish out antibiotics as treatment if the whooping cough is detected within three weeks.
However, if a person has been infected for longer, antibiotics will not speed up their recovery.
Whooping cough is less severe in older children and adults but can still cause sore ribs, hernias, ear infections and urinary incontinence among these groups.
