Erika Badenhorst, 67, believes she would have died without her flu jab after a severe respiratory illness, sepsis and RSV left her in hospital for three weeks. The former nurse, from Barry, spent three weeks in a London hospital after falling ill while sightseeing in January.
A sudden chill in London
Ms Badenhorst was spending her last few hours with her son before he returned to South Africa on January 9. On January 8, she took him to Buckingham Palace and St James's Park. At Buckingham Palace, she told him she was "absolutely freezing", adding: "I've never in the 25 years that I've been here been so cold."
Heading to get a coach, her body began seizing up when she stopped to use the toilet. "I felt like my whole body was contracting and when I came out, my son said to me, 'Mum, walk properly.' I said, 'I can't. Everything is contracting.'"
Back at the hotel, her son suggested calling an ambulance, but she dismissed her symptoms as something that would get better. As a nurse with 40 years of experience, she said: "No. I'll be fine in the morning." He phoned an ambulance at about 4am.
Three weeks in hospital
She was rushed to Hillingdon Hospital in London and admitted to the respiratory unit. "The first week I can't remember much of, and I didn't even remember that my son was in the ambulance with me," she said. In the first few days of her stay, she was told she was very close to being ventilated.
She was diagnosed with a severe respiratory illness, later developing sepsis and RSV alongside flu. She was only allowed to leave the hospital on January 31. She was eventually transferred back to Cardiff, but over the following month she had to be readmitted a number of times before tests revealed she was immunocompromised. She now receives lifelong immunoglobulin therapy.
Vaccine plea
The experience has changed her daily life; she avoids crowded spaces and stays alert to any sign of infection. She believes that without the flu infection her body wouldn't have managed to fight off the infections. "I was really ill, and if it wasn't for the flu vaccine and the NHS, I wouldn't be here sitting here today."
Ms Badenhorst, originally from South Africa, has spent 25 years in the UK and lived in Wales in 2004, working as an agency nurse across various care settings and hospitals. She urges others to get vaccinated, saying: "If you're invited to have a flu injection, do, because, you know, whenever I go on coffee mornings with some other old folk and things like that, I'm always saying to them, you know, it's very important. And some people say, 'Oh, I'm not going to have it again.' I said, 'Why not?'"
Public Health Wales say routine flu vaccination is estimated to have prevented more than 800 flu-related hospital admissions in Wales last winter and without vaccination, 50% more people would have been admitted to hospital. Last year, more than one million people across Wales received a flu vaccine.
Dr Christopher Johnson, head of the vaccine preventable disease programme at Public Health Wales, said: "Winter viruses like flu spread easily and can hit older people and those with health conditions particularly hard. The impact of the flu vaccination programme is clear and it's a powerful reminder that vaccination isn't just about individual protection, it's about protecting others around you and reducing winter pressures on the NHS. Getting your flu vaccine each winter is one of the best ways to stay well – it offers the strongest protection available."
He added that people who qualify for the flu vaccine will also likely qualify for other winter vaccines, including those for COVID-19 and RSV.
