Charlotte Lucy Cleverley-Bisman (born 24 November 2003) is a New Zealander known as the face of a New Zealand campaign to encourage vaccination against meningococcal disease after contracting and surviving severe meningococcal sepsis. She was nicknamed "Miraculous Baby Charlotte" by her fellow New Zealanders as a result of making headlines worldwide after recuperating from a series of life-threatening complications. She is the daughter of Pam Cleverley and Perry Bisman. Meningococcal disease in New Zealand In 2004, New Zealand was in the thirteenth year of an epidemic of meningococcal disease, a bacterial infection which can cause meningitis and blood poisoning. Most Western countries have fewer than three cases for every 100,000 people each year, with New Zealand averaging 1.5 before the epidemic started in 1991; in 2001, the worst year of the epidemic in New Zealand, the rate hit 17. 5,400 New Zealanders had caught the disease, 220 had died, and 1080 had developed serious disabilities, such as limb amputations or brain damage. Eight out of ten cases were under 20 and half were under 5 years of age. The internationally low proportion of deaths from the disease had been credited to wide publicity of the disease and its symptoms. In June 2004, Charlotte Cleverley-Bisman became the face of the epidemic. Disease onset The morning of 17 June 2004, Cleverley-Bisman vomited and was unhappy, but the parents took it as anticipated teething pains. By mid-morning she developed a small blemish on her neck, and her mother rushed her to Waiheke Ostend Medical Centre, where staff diagnosed meningococcemia. In ten minutes she was covered with small spots. She was injected with penicillin, and rushed to Starship Children's Health by helicopter. Half an hour after the first spots were noticed, she was blistered, swollen, and purple over her entire body, with her extremities blackening. She was not expected to survive, and needed to be resuscitated twice during her first half-hour at Starship. She was connected to life support systems which fed her, transfused blood and drugs, and assisted her breathing. On the second day, Starship doctors said that if she lived at all, Cleverley-Bisman would need to have at least both legs and most of her left hand amputated in order to save her life from gangrene. During the three weeks while doctors waited for demarcation between dead and living flesh to become clearer, her catheters became clogged several times and needed to