The heartbroken parents of Madeline Jones have spoken for the first time since the promising young law student died on holiday just days after contracting a deadly flu.
Madeline Jones, 18, started showing mild flu symptoms before she died while on holiday with her boyfriend on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast in October.
Interviewer Karl Stefanovic struggled to hold back tears as he spoke to Brisbane parents Damian and Danielle about the sudden loss of their daughter.
Young law student Madeline Jones (pictured) tragically died shortly before her 19th birthday
‘She just said she felt a bit off-colour and then all of a sudden they’re telling me that she might not survive,’ Mr Jones told Stefanovic on 60 Minutes.
‘We just told her we loved her and she was going to be okay.
‘But she wasn’t.’
Ms Jones fell into a coma five days after she first complained of flu symptoms, and died shortly before her 19th birthday.
Doctors said influenza along with a bacterial infection resulted in sepsis, which occurs when chemicals released by the immune system cause organ failure.
Anilmal lover Madeline Jones (pictured) started showing mild symptoms while on holiday with her boyfriend on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast
Speaking for the first time since the tragedy, Brisbane parents Damian and Danielle (pictured) said nothing could prepare them for their daughter’s sudden death
‘We just told her we loved her and she was going to be okay… but she wasn’t,’ Mr Jones said
In the days following her death, family and friends paid tribute to Ms Jones, an animal lover, tennis player and children’s coach, and student of business and law,The Courier Mail reported.
‘She was very funny, beautiful and very smart and she loved animals,’ her mother Danielle Nielsen said.
Callum Royle was left in a state of shock by the death of his high school sweetheart, and the speed in which the illness took her life.
‘It’s hard to believe that only a month ago we were having a discussion about our future and we were pretty certain that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together,’ he said.
Ms Jones’ father Damian Jones said his daughter volunteered for the RSPCA and ‘wanted to adopt every animal under the sun’.
While studying at QUT, Ms Jones worked at burger chain Grill’d and coached children at The Samford Tennis Club north west of Brisbane.
The club has honoured the talented tennis player and coach by renaming its junior fixtures shield the Maddy Jones Shield.
Ms Jones’ (pictured, right with boyfriend Callum Royle) health soon deteriorated, and five days later she fell into a coma while in intensive care and died
Queensland health authorities said last year’s flu season was the worst in the state’s history.
At least 52,000 people fell ill with the disease, with 5653 of them ending up in hospital.
Of those hospitalised, over 11 per cent needed treatment in intensive care units.
Authorities have now warned this year’s flu virus could be even worse than last year’s.
Chair of the Global Health Council Dr Jonathan Quick warned a deadly flu mutation could develop this winter.
He said the virus could prove to be the deadliest pandemic in human history.
While studying at QUT, Ms Jones (pictured) worked at burger chain Grill’d and coached children at The Samford Tennis Club north west of Brisbane
Immunisation Coalition chairman Professor Paul Van Buynder blamed different strains of the virus and a vaccine which proved less effective than expected.
The virus strains changed and no longer matched the vaccines, leaving a gap while new vaccines were produced.
Australian Medical Association Queensland president Bill Boyd said elderly people and children were most at risk from influenza.
Last year’s flu virus killed multiple people last year, including the young and healthy.
In Victoria, eight-year-old Rosie Anderson died, while eight elderly people living in the same nursing home in Wangaratta also died.
In the same state a woman who caught the flu while pregnant was put in an induced-coma after giving birth.
A further six people died at a nursing home in Tasmania.
Family and friends have paid tribute to Ms Jones (pictured), an animal lover, tennis player and children’s coach, and student of business and law