Meran and Joëlle Bosgraaf went to the doctor four times with their daughter Lieke. The last time in Hardenberg hospital. She died a few hours later. “We arrived there at two o’clock. And everything accelerated so quickly that she died at four o’clock. Within two hours on a Sunday, things went completely wrong.”
Lieke was two and a half years old. According to her father, an easy child. “She was always singing. She was making funny faces and putting on voices. It was a pleasure to have her in the house as a child.” Lieke dies from the effects of sepsis, also known as blood poisoning. A disease her parents had never heard of before. And that is not surprising, says acute medicine internist Hjalmar Bouma of the UMCG.
“One hundred million people get sepsis every year. In the city of Groningen, three people a day get sepsis and three people die every week. So the numbers are enormous and yet the majority of people have never heard of sepsis.” According to Bouma, it is difficult to make the correct diagnosis early, also because the symptoms often occur with less serious diseases. “It is important to recognize sepsis, especially in the early phase, because then you have the best chance of starting treatment in time. But people are not yet that sick, so you often have to try to look into the future.”
Meran, Joëlle and sister Lauren now have to continue without Lieke. To spare others that suffering, they founded the ‘Voor Lieke’ foundation. They want better awareness of the dangers of sepsis, both among parents and medical professionals. In addition, they want to keep Lieke’s memory alive.
“If it later turns out that a concerned parent was right, and that a child’s life was saved and the parents’ suffering was spared, then we have the feeling that Lieke did not go in vain,” says Meran. “Suddenly our daughter is no longer here, which feels very harsh. That should not be the end of her life, this must be shared.”
With the foundation, Meran and Joëlle hope to raise money to, for example, give lectures and have leaflets made. The ‘Voor Lieke’ foundation already has a website and their story is already getting reach on social media. Donations can also be made from next week.
“There is absolutely room for such a foundation,” confirms internist Bouma, who is also chairman of the Sepsisnet foundation. “It is important that there is more awareness of sepsis, which helps so that it is included on the knowledge agendas and that we thus receive funding for research into sepsis. This allows us to improve early recognition, but also to develop targeted treatment.”
