© Murray/NewsNikiyah Torres, with her mom Naomi Troy, who received a flu shot without parents permission was taken to a hospital.
A six-year-old Brooklyn girl, Nikiyah Torres-Pierre, was hospitalized recently after being injected with the swine flu vaccine. The vaccination was conducted entirely without her parents' permission in an incident school nurses are calling "a mistake."
Mother Naomi Troy told the
NY Daily News, "I was outraged." After receiving the swine flu injection, her daughter complained she was itching and her stomach was hurting. That's when school officials called an ambulance that rushed Nikiyah to the hospital.
Nikiyah is epileptic and takes prescription medication to treat the condition. Her mother was concerned about the possible side effects of combining a swine flu vaccine shot with epilepsy drugs and was waiting to hear back from her doctor before giving the school permission to vaccinate her daughter. That permission was apparently irrelevant, as some schools simply vaccinate any and all children without concern for parental permission.
After injecting her daughter without permission, the school nurse then called Naomi Troy and tried to persuade her to sign a consent form after the fact. "I was insulted. I was really angry," said Naomi.
So far, 1,800 NY students have been vaccinated against swine flu. Hundreds of thousands more are in line to be vaccinated when a sufficient supply of vaccines is made available.