The parents of Anna Rosa Bartolotta, the 4-year-old girl from Zen who died of diphtheria, are being investigated for manslaughter . The couple had chosen not to vaccinate her , claiming that a vaccination had caused their cousin's autism . The Prosecutor's Office—the investigation is coordinated by Palermo Deputy Prosecutor Laura Vaccaro and Prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia—hypothesizes that the omission, consisting of the failure to vaccinate against diphtheria, which has been mandatory for years, led to Anna Rosa's death: hence the charge of manslaughter by omission .
Palermo's juvenile prosecutor, Claudia Caramanna, has opened a civil case to assess the parental responsibility of the parents of Anna Rosa, the 4-and-a-half-year-old girl who died last Thursday of diphtheria. The girl, like her four other siblings, had chosen not to be vaccinated by her mother and father.
The Juvenile Prosecutor's Office interviewed the doctors and pediatrician who examined the girl in the days before her initial admission to Cervello Hospital. The pediatrician told investigators about the difficulty of immunizing children in the neighborhood.
The order states, " There is a popular belief in the Zen neighborhood that children become autistic after vaccination , and for this reason, they categorically refuse to have their children vaccinated."
It also emerged today that the deceased girl's cousin, who is hospitalized, also tested positive for diphtheria . He had the same symptoms as his cousin, but had received the first three rounds of vaccinations, so the illness manifested itself in a much milder form: "He has a fever and a slight sore throat, some plaque, nothing more than a typical flu-like symptom," said Domenico Cipolla, medical director of the Arnas Civico hospital.
Anna Rosa's mother attacked the doctors in a Facebook post yesterday, calling them "incompetent" and accusing them of "underestimating the situation."
Vincenzo Tipo, president of the Italian Society of Pediatric Emergency Medicine (SIMEUP), head physician at Santobono Hospital in Naples, draws attention to the importance of vaccines. "When vaccination coverage declines, spaces are created where diseases we had almost forgotten can resurface."
(Unioneonline)