On Good Morning Britain, Kate Garraway discussed a personal encounter with sepsis, though it is unclear which loved one she was referring to. According to Daily Mirror - Main, Garraway described a situation where someone she loved with sepsis expressed feeling like they were going to die, but a medical professional did not necessarily believe it at that point; the specific medical professional involved remains unknown. Garraway's late husband Derek was also hospitalized with sepsis during his health battles, but whether the incident she described occurred before or after his hospitalization is not specified.
Garraway and co-host Paul Brand spoke to Melissa Mead, whose one-year-old son William died from sepsis in 2014, and Zaheer Ahmed, whose five-year-old nephew died from sepsis in hospital in 2022. These grieving families are campaigning for a national inquiry into what they see as failings in sepsis care, though the exact nature of these failings and the current status or timeline of the campaign are not detailed.
Zaheer, it's obviously challenging when it's a child, but even in adults, that sensation of feeling like you're going to die is still not being listened to.
Derek died at age 56 in January 2024 after spending the previous Christmas and New Year in hospital following a heart attack. He had contracted COVID-19 in March 2020 and had one of the worst cases of the virus in the following months and years. Garraway detailed her family's ordeal in two ITV documentaries, Caring for Derek and Finding Derek. She has been open about her grief journey and previously spoke about Derek feeling trapped in his body.
I've experienced it myself, someone I loved who had sepsis, who said, 'This is bad, I feel like I'm going to die,' and the medical professional didn't necessarily believe that at that point.
I just wanted him to know I wasn't giving up because if you are trapped, as they believe he was, inside a body that was very damaged and failing, I didn't want him to think that we were departing him, that we were giving up.
He lived on and on through situations that they didn't think maybe he could. So, I think there is a little bit of peace, but there is also a sense of unreality about it. I think that it was a huge honour for me, actually.
And you can't thank enough the people around, the nurses and doctors around, who never stopped fighting for his life but also somehow managed to hold people. And one of the things I keep thinking about, it was a huge honour to be there with him through those last hours and to have that.
I think about all the people during Covid that didn't have that, and I think about all the circumstances when people don't have that.