Mum's warning after vicious illness leaves girl a quadriplegic

A mum has warned parents to be vigilant after a vicious illness turned her six-year-old daughter into a quadriplegic in 12 days.

McKenzie Andersen got ‘the sniffles’ over the 2014 Christmas break, along with her mother and brother in Oregon, US.

While the rest of the family recovered from the minor illness McKenzie deteriorated, suffering from a mystery illness.

Just 12 days later, the young girl was paralysed as doctors revealed the heartbreaking diagnosis of acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), a mysterious polio-like disease.

“[It’s a] vicious monster of a disease,” mother Angie Andersen told Fox News.

“She has lost the muscles in her neck so kind of like a baby when they’re born it looks like they have no neck,” Ms Anderson wrote on Facebook on October 23.

Now 10 years old, McKenzie is on a ventilator and remains bedridden.

Experts are divided as to the cause of AFM, which has paralysed children across the world.

“In 2014, children in the US began to be diagnosed with a mystery illness that caused a polio-like paralysis,” Professor Raina MacIntyre, Director of the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Epidemic Response said in a January press release from UNSW.

“More than 120 children developed the condition, known as acute flaccid myelitis, in the US alone but experts were baffled as to the cause.”

Ms Andersen advocates for research into the rare illness and has a message for fellow sufferers and parents.

“You might think that everything’s over, but it’s not,” Ms Andersen said.

“Keep fighting, it’s slow progress but it’s not no progress.”