Baby dies after receiving 6 shots for 12 vaccines

Roughly 12 hours after 1-year-old Sa’Niya was given six shots for 12 vaccines during a wellness visit, the little girl died. Sa’Niya – who had just turned 1 year old on March 11 – received the shots on March 26 at about 4 p.m., at Golisano Children’s Hospital Pediatric Practice in Rochester, New York, according to the baby’s mother, Shanticia Nelson.

The nurse who administered the shots said Sa’Niya needed them to catch her up on vaccinations she missed at her 6-month appointment – a common but potentially dangerous recommendation, according to several pediatricians interviewed by The Defender.

“Sa’Niya was a happy baby,” Nelson said. “She was happy and she loved her dad. Everything was ‘dada.’”

According to the visit notes, Sa’Niya was given six shots containing 12 vaccines, including: “DTap/Hep B/IPV (Pediarix), HiB/Acthib/Hiberix, Pneumococcal 20-valent Conj vaccine, Varicella (known commonly as Chickenpox), MMR, and Hepatitis A.”

She also received sodium fluoride as a teeth treatment.

Nelson said she told the nurse she was uncomfortable having Sa’Niya receive so many shots at once. According to Hanley, the nurse became angry and told Nelson, “She needs these shots. You got to give her these shots.”

The nurse never explained the 12 different vaccines and never mentioned the vaccines’ possible side effects, such as seizures and death.

Sa’Niya was a generally healthy baby. However, on the day she received the shots, she had a “little cough and runny nose,” Nelson said. According to the medical notes from the visit, Sa’Niya also had some eczema, diaper dermatitis, and constipation.

Within hours after receiving the shots, Sa’Niya’s eyes rolled back and she began foaming at the mouth. The police “ended up coming,” Nelson said. They told her it looked as if Sa’Niya had had a small seizure but that she was breathing OK.

Nelson recalled the police saying, “You guys don’t have to take her to the hospital, but if you want to take her to the hospital to make sure she’s OK, you could do that.”

Nelson knew something was seriously wrong with Sa’Niya. “I looked at my baby and I said, ‘No, my baby is not right … this is not my daughter. My daughter is active. As soon she gets picked up, she’s active.’”

But when Nelson picked her up in that moment, Sa’Niya “just laid there … her eyes just wandered. She wasn’t responding to me calling her name how she used to.”

An ambulance took Sa’Niya to Saint Vincent Hospital in Lake Erie, Pennsylvania, where doctors started running tests on her. They told Nelson it appeared Sa’Niya had had four seizures by the time she arrived at the hospital.

Nelson left the hospital room to bring in her husband and two older children.

The parents and older children hadn’t been in the waiting room for more than two minutes when a nurse told Nelson, “I’m sorry but your daughter – she’s very sick … right now she’s in cardiac arrest.”

Nelson was told that Sa’Niya’s heart wasn’t responding to CPR and that her blood sugar level was over 700.

Hospital staff continued CPR for roughly 40 minutes. They said, “We’re going to check for a pulse one more time, and if we don’t have a pulse anymore, she’s gone.”

Nelson said, “They checked and she didn’t have that pulse.”

That happened around 4 a.m. on March 27, Nelson told The Defender. “I just want my baby back,” Nelson said. “No amount of money in this world can replace my baby … I want justice for my baby.”

Nelson, Carter, and Hanley said in their CHD.TV interview that they hope what happened to Sa’Niya will never happen to another child.

They encouraged parents to do their own research rather than trusting medical staff to give informed consent for the risks of vaccination.

“Don’t let your kids take the vaccination shots,” Nelson said. “Ask questions. Before they give you anything, ask questions because I promise you they’re not going to tell you everything.”...

Dr. Liz Mumper, a pediatrician, said it’s “tragic that a healthy baby died soon after receiving multiple vaccines.” But unfortunately, it’s not as rare as people might think.

Historically, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has “encouraged clinicians to take every opportunity to catch babies up on vaccines,” Mumper said.

She disagreed with claims that all babies can handle lots of vaccines given at the same time. She said:

Specifically, some babies do not have the liver function or detoxification capacity to handle a cumulative aluminum load. Vaccines stress mitochondria – the powerhouses of the cell. Some babies do not have enough mitochondrial reserve to tolerate the oxidative stress of multiple vaccines on the same day.

As The Defender previously reported, pediatric clinics can receive multiple financial incentives for administering vaccines. For example, insurance companies may offer pediatricians bonus payments for meeting certain benchmarks, such as having around 80 percent of patients fully vaccinated by age 2.

Three other pediatricians – Drs. Renata Moon, Paul Thomas, and Lawrence Palevsky – also told The Defender that administering multiple vaccines to babies and children to “catch them up” isn’t all that rare.

“The death of any child is an absolute tragedy,” said Moon. She told The Defender:

Catch-up vaccines are regularly given in most offices. Parents need to clearly understand the risks and benefits of each individual shot and the risks of giving them in different combinations all at one time.

We need a public health system that we can trust to act only in the best interests of our nation’s children, and not in the best interests of the pocketbooks of big pharmaceutical companies.