She was ‘the centre of our world’, says family of Ella Kissi-Debrah

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Ella Kissi-Debrah was an active child who loved sports and music and dreamed of becoming a pilot.

Her mother Rosamund Kissi-Debrah described the nine-year-old as “the centre” of her family’s world.

She played instruments including the cornet – despite her asthma – the banjo, guitar, piano and steel pans, a two-week inquest at Southwark Coroner’s Court heard.

Her mother described her as being “extremely healthy at birth” and “extremely active” as a baby, with trips to the swimming pool and local gymnastics club.

But in the three years before her death in 2013, Ella suffered multiple seizures and was in hospital 27 times.

As a six-year-old, she had to be placed in a medically induced coma for three days to try to stabilise her condition.

“It got to the point we were just waiting for the next (seizure) to happen,” her mother said.

By summer 2012, she had been classified as disabled and often had to be carried by piggyback to get her around, her mother said.

The girl was seen by consultants at six hospitals in the years before her death and had tests for epilepsy, but doctors eventually concluded her condition was purely respiratory.

Special protocols had been put in place so Ella could receive treatment quickly at hospital whenever she was admitted.

Her mother said she and doctors had been “looking in the wrong direction” for the cause of her daughter’s breathing difficulties, adding there was “no rhyme or reason (for the episodes)”.

On the night of February 14 2013, Ms Kissi-Debrah described her daughter “screaming” as she left her with paramedics to try to get her other two children into the ambulance so they could leave for the hospital.

“When I came to the ambulance she looked awful, the person I had left to get the twins was not the person that I met in the ambulance – when I saw her in the ambulance I knew she was going to have a seizure, she was so bad,” Ms Kissi-Debrah said.

Describing the efforts of doctors to resuscitate Ella, she said: “They tried and they tried and they tried.”

Ella died at 3.27am on February 15.

Ms Kissi-Debrah said the last things she read to her daughter were extracts of Beethoven’s love letters as a Valentine’s Day treat.

She told the inquest that “moving (house) would have been the first thing” the family would have done had they known the risks air pollution posed to Ella.

Ms Kissi-Debrah said she knew about car fumes, but had never heard of nitrogen oxides – among the most dangerous forms of air pollution.

She said environmentalists understood the problems of air pollution but among the general population “there’s a lot of education to be had”.

Professor Sir Stephen Holgate, professor of immunopharmacology at the University of Southampton, told the inquest that Ella’s “exceptionally rare” condition, in combination with her surroundings, had put her at “exquisite” risk.

A 2018 report he wrote found that levels of pollution at Catford monitoring station, a mile from Ella’s home, “consistently” exceeded lawful EU limits over the three years before her death.

Sir Stephen said it was “almost certain” that Ella’s asthma would have been “substantially less severe” if the concentration of pollution in the area had been within the limits, adding that if she had moved to a “much less polluted” area he believes she would have improved.

Ella Kissi-Debrah inquest: Air pollution 'contributed to death of nine-year-old', coroner rules