“He looked perfect. He was our little miracle,” the 40 year old pediatrician told CNN.

 

After spending seven years trying to have a child, Liauw and his wife were thrilled when their first baby arrived. Their joy soon turned into concern when Obelix began struggling to tolerate food. He vomited and developed diarrhea after almost every bottle, with symptoms occurring as many as eight times a day.

 

At first, Liauw’s wife changed her diet because she suspected that Obelix might be reacting to something in her breast milk.

 

The problems continued, however, and when Obelix was only 2 weeks old, he was admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit, where doctors gave him fluids to treat dehydration.

 

“He just kept crying, crying, crying, all day long,” Liauw recalled from his home in Bekasi city, Indonesia.

 

“If we didn’t feed him, he was OK, but he was so hungry all the time.”

 

Liauw later sought advice from a pediatric nutrition specialist, who recommended a specially designed formula. It did not improve Obelix’s condition, and his weight fell from 2.4 kilograms, around 5 pounds, to 2.2 kilograms.

 

When Obelix reached 1 month of age, doctors inserted a feeding tube and diagnosed him with a bowel infection at a hospital in Jakarta. They tried several antibiotics in an effort to control the infection, but none appeared to be effective.

 

Further blood tests indicated that Obelix had congenital short bowel syndrome, an uncommon condition that interfered with his ability to digest food and resulted in a prolonged stay in hospital.

 

Despite being extremely small, Obelix later developed sepsis, a severe response by the body to an infection.

 

Tests showed that the antibiotics doctors had used were not controlling the infection. Obelix died in hospital on February 12, 2020, at just 3 months and 2 weeks old.

 

An autopsy was not carried out. However, the sequence of events led his parents to believe that antimicrobial resistance, commonly known as AMR, may have contributed to his death.