A one-year-old baby died after swallowing a button battery.
Isabella Rees was sent home from hospital multiple times in 2015 before her mother Allison Rees found her ‘saturated’ in her own blood.
On her last visit to the Sunshine Hospital Emergency Department, an X-ray revealed the button battery – but it was too late, a Victorian coroner heard this week.
The Age reports, Isabella was first taken to hospital January 16 last year, after she began vomiting.
Once she stopped vomiting, Hospital staff sent the baby home. Once home, she ran a fever.
The next week, Allison took her daughter back to the hospital, while there she found parts of water balloon in her nappy. She was told her daughter had a urinary tract infection and given antibiotics.
Fifteen days after the last hospital visit Allison discovered her daughter in her cot, saturated in blood.
She rushed her daughter to hospital where the battery was found in her oesophagus.
Isabella died from cardiac arrest, on the operating table at Sunshine Hospital.
The Victorian State Coroner is currently considering whether to hold an inquest into Isabella’s death.
Allison has since been campaigning for tougher product safety laws with batteries.
Starting the Facebook page, Bella’s Footprints – Button Battery Awareness, she wrote, ‘Earlier this year heaven received another precious angel, when our beloved Isabella Rees passed away after ingesting a button battery at only 14 months.
‘Please join us in celebrating Isabella’s short life and help us to raise awareness of the dangers of button battery ingestion to the rest of the world.’
In a Rees family tribute to Isabella, they wrote, ‘What we would give to have another chance to hear your voice, to feel your kiss and to see you grow.
‘Our hearts are broken.’
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