Urgent health warning after child loses leg
An athlete who caught chickenpox as a little boy resulted in him nearly dying. He entered cardiac arrest, lost 70% of his hearing and had to have his right leg amputated. As a warning to others, Brendan Hall has now issued an urgent warning about the virus and its devastating effects.
Australian health authorities recently revealed chickenpox is still running rampant through the community despite Covid restrictions drastically reducing other common viruses such as the flu.
Paralympic swimmer Brenden Hall, aged 28, caught chickenpox from his brother in 1999. His sibling got through chickenpox unscathed, but Hall suffered immensely from the common ailment, with his parents fearing the worst as he went into cardiac arrest for 27 minutes.
Hall described the moment he woke up in hospital to find out he'd lost his leg from a condition that gives many young people only mild symptoms.
'I wasn't aware my leg was going to be amputated until I came back around a few weeks after it happened.
'I was in severe pain and constant screaming, I can't remember a lot from at the time but my parents made the best decision they could,' Hall told Daily Mail Australia.
Chickenpox is one of a number of infectious diseases such as measles, mumps and shingles that doctors remain concerned about.
It was recently revealed that last year there were more than 10,000 cases of the varicella-zoster virus, which causes chickenpox, in Queensland alone.
Hall now has a 10-week-old child of his own and wants other parents to know that it is vital to keep up routine immunisations and safety precautions for common childhood diseases whether they be measles, mumps or chicken pox.
'I'd like to be in the group that puts themselves out there to spread the word, to remind people of a serious danger that, for a lot of people, slips under the radar,' he said.