GIRL IN COMA AFTER SWINE FLU REALLY MENINGITIS; Parents vigil for 5-yr-old Ruby.

Byline: MIRROR REPORTER

A FIVE-year-old girl was in a coma yesterday amid claims that doctors first suspected her meningitis was swine flu.

Little Ruby Ayoub is in now intensive care. The ordeal began when her worried parents Michel and Emer took their daughter to their GP on Friday.

But they claim their family doctor suspected the youngster, from Sandyford in Dublin, had a bad case of swine flu.

Hours later they brought their desperately sick daughter to Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Crumlin where she remains.

Her distraught parents are keeping a vigil by the child's bedside in the hope she comes out of the coma.

Michel said: "Ruby's still in a coma, we need a miracle. She was vomiting and had a headache. We brought her to the doctors and they thought she had a viral infection and that it was H1N1.

"But I brought her back to the same place again and they said that she had another viral infection and they were going to send her home.

"Then she vomited in front of them and they said bring her to hospital."

Ruby is due to celebrate her sixth birthday next week.

But the family now face the possibility of spending the occasion in a hospital ward.

Michel said: "They gave her antibiotics and they did a lumbar puncture.

"It was then they discovered it was meningitis. From there on she was going downhill."

Ruby's grandfather John Holden yesterday told how there was no indication the little girl was so ill.

He said: "She was in school on Friday and there was nothing wrong at all."