Six-year-old dies from scurvy despite longstanding diet concerns, Queensland coroner finds

Connor Dean, a six-year-old boy with Down syndrome, died from cardiac arrest triggered by severe vitamin C deficiency and scurvy during surgery in August 2024.

In August 2024, a six-year-old boy with Down syndrome died in a Brisbane hospital from scurvy — a disease most Australians associate only with the distant past — after cardiac arrest during surgery revealed a body depleted of vitamin C to near-zero levels. Connor Dean's death sits at the intersection of vulnerability and oversight: a child whose restricted diet had been documented for months, yet whose deficiency was only discovered after it had already taken his life. His story asks a question that outlasts any single tragedy — how does a preventable disease from another century find its way

Six-year-old dies from scurvy despite longstanding diet concerns, Queensland coroner finds

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