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Jorge and Puri Megias, Fundación Irene Megías contra la Meningitis, Spain
Our Irene died at the age of 17 years from meningococcal septicaemia strain B, which is most common in Spain, as the meningococcal B vaccine currently is not available in any country in the world although science is making progress in finding an effective vaccine. In the case of our Irene, there were two medical mistakes, one at the Primary Care Centre and another in hospital.
And what did we, Irene's parents, do? We never had a thirst for revenge, for justice, against anybody. Quite the contrary: we launched a foundation for fighting the disease that killed our daughter, from the standpoint of help, help us all, doctors, parents, Spanish society as a whole.
Today at our Foundation, having a presence in 10 major Spanish cities and with a team of mature and experienced management people, we are about to start the job of editing and implementing, on a national basis, a Clinical Practice Guideline for Management of the Invasive Meningococcal Disease, which will change the way this disease (meningitis and septicaemia) is managed in all Primary Care Centres and all hospitals throughout Spain. We are also raising money in order to research on the genetic predisposition to these diseases: we believe we will be able to predict, by analyzing the blood of a human couple, if their future children will have a high predisposition to suffer from meningitis or sepsis. We have set up a specialized psychological treatment service, currently available in the province of Madrid; we have launched awareness campaigns in different provinces in Spain and we inform, as much as we can do, to everyone on the early symptoms of these diseases; we provide medical second opinions free of charge for all families requesting them, even in many cases to those in Latin America that contact us from there.
What we want is to radically transform the way these diseases are currently managed in Spain, both from the families´ point of view and form the health professionals´ one. That will take us some time, but it is the best we can do in order to reduce the number of casualties and the number of survivors with severe sequelae today found in Spain.
A psychologist recently told another "orphaned" mother (her son died from septicaemia 6 years ago, being 11) that "the best thing you can do from a psychological standpoint, when a child dies, is to help others". I support what the psychologist said with my personal experience: when the flow of love, time, life, when the desire for the good that you devoted to your child is interrupted by death, if you direct all the love inside you to get the good for others, that is the best possible consolation. The best solution we can offer is to join in the positive fight against meningitis and septicaemia.
When our daughter Irene died, my wife and I went to have some seven sessions with a renowned psychiatrist, at the end of which we both realized that it was absolute useless for us. Then we rolled up our sleeves and said: "we must do something to stop this from happening again". And here we are: the entire world marvels at our peace, our serenity, our inner strength, and our strong desire to do good for others.
Jorge Megías and Purificación Roca, Irene's parents.
