Latest News:
July 12, 2010 - NSW Health Care Complaints Commission confirms AVN is an anti-vaccination group
August 5, 2009 - Dick Smith supports vaccination facts
July 20, 2009 - “Eye of the Needle”, Qweekend (PDF File)
June 30, 2009 - Toni McCaffery speaks to 2GB Radio (MP3 file)
May 20, 2009 -
Queensland Premier calls for action on Whooping Cough
May 11, 2009 -Dana McCaffery’s family welcome national review.
Did you know Whooping Cough can be fatal?
Dana Elizabeth McCaffery died in March at 4 weeks of age from Whooping cough. Sadly, she is one of three babies that has died from this totally vaccine preventable disease in Australia this year.
From 1993-2008, a further 16 children under 12 months have died from Pertussis in Australia. In 2008, 14,511 people caught Pertussis nationally. This year, 12,712, children and adults have already caught this insidious disease between January and June.
Born perfectly healthy, our baby Dana became the innocent victim of Whooping Cough due to dangerously low awareness and even lower vaccination rates.
In just four short weeks, our beautiful baby girl taught us boundless love and amazing courage. Read the account of Dana's journey. If you cannot access Facebook you can read their story here.
We were recently interviewed by Channel 7’s Sunday Night program, as part of a special on vaccination. The story aired on Sunday 26 April 2009 and can now be viewed online at Yahoo! 7. You can also read Daryl Passmore's story from the Sunday Mail newspaper here (PDF).
Learn more about how you can make a difference
We, Dana’s parents, wish to thank everyone who has offered their support, prayers and help and would simply like to ask that:
• All parents vaccinate their children
• All adults get a booster, which the government should make free for everyone
• If you have a cough, get tested for Pertussis to prevent the spread of the bacteria
• All levels of government and health workers improve processes to warn the community of outbreaks of any virus or disease and the precautions to take.
Join our Facebook group and help us affect change. Toni and David have written to the Prime MinisterFederal Health Minister and state premiers and health ministers calling for a national response to stop this epidemic and promote immunisation. On 9 May 2009, Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon announced a national review of education and prevention measures and in a recent letter to the McCaffery’s, outlined how all Australian governments are developing a new National Immunisation Strategy by the end of 2009 to improve immunisation coverage, increase accessibility of vaccines, review scheduling, improve education and training and integrate strategies with public health interventions to prevent the spread of Pertussis.
If you would like to have your say, we ask everyone to write to their state or territory health minister. Addresses are available from this site.
The McCaffery’s are also participating in a current review with NSW Health regarding the systemic failures that led to Dana's death.
We also ask that you pass the information on to those you think might be willing to join forces, so that we can help people realise we need to work together to protect our most vulnerable, and to achieve real change.
We owe it to Dana.
Yours in Community
Toni, David, James and Aisling McCaffery
Vaccination information can be found via the Dept of Health.
Please direct enquiries to Info@danamccaffery.com.