In focus: Vinnie’s story

On July 13, 2012, our world fell apart when our eight-year-old son ‘Vinnie’ died suddenly, just a few hours after being taken ill at school suffering from what we believed to be a common sickness bug.

While Great Ormond Street Hospital carried out Vinnie’s post-mortem examination, the official process into our son’s unexplained death began and we started to arrange a funeral for our little boy with no plausible idea how he had died.

Five weeks after his death, we stood in front of family and friends and said a nonsensical final goodbye to our son, knowing only that the initial post-mortem findings had shown that his brain was swollen.