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Son nearly dies from tetanus, parents change their mind and vaccinate their other kids

Ian Williams is a smart guy - a scientist, an inventor, a businessman - but when it came to son Alijah's health he dismissed science and behaved like a "hippy", creating a situation where Alijah almost died.

"Blood is dripping from his mouth and he is saying 'save me daddy'," Williams told the Sunday Star-Times.

"I was holding the hand of my kid who had an arched back, the muscles could break his bones at any second, and his heart could stop."

Alijah was hospitalised with tetanus late last year; something he should have been immunised against, something Williams and his wife Linda decided not to do.

It was a painful lesson. They watched as seven-year-old Alijah spent three weeks in hospital, his body violently and painfully convulsing as tetanus attacked his nervous system. "When it came to my kid's health, I let the hippy win. I should have let the science win."

The Williams are the one in 10 parents who opt out when it comes to vaccination, not out of ignorance, but because they think they know everything. Williams said they believed they'd done their research but now admits they were out of their depth.

"Parents like us make the decision to not vaccinate on very little factual information about the actual consequences of the diseases."

He also says they fell for the myths and conspiracies that pepper the internet. The Williams downloaded information from the internet and underestimated the diseases while over-estimating the risks of the vaccine reactions. About one in one million will suffer a bad reaction to the tetanus vaccine - such as painful nerve inflammation - while Alijah had a one in 10 chance of dying from tetanus.

Alijah was discharged in a wheelchair on January 8 after 26 days in hospital. He faces a 12-month recovery including having to learn to eat and walk again.

Others have not been so lucky. A three-year-old unimmunised child died during the ongoing whooping cough epidemic last year. He should have been vaccinated by the time he was crawling.

Williams now wants Alijah to be a poster boy for immunisation, knowing his story will ignite fierce debate on the controversial issue.

They have immunised their other children and wrote to Alijah's school to warn parents who had not vaccinated.