Former Pop Idol Darius Campbell reveals he fell into a coma and almost DIED after drinking dirty water for charity ad
DARIUS Campbell has revealed he fell into a coma and almost DIED after drinking dirty water for a charity ad.
The former Pop Idol star drank water from the Thames to prove it could be made safe but almost lost his life after contracting a virus.
Darius filmed a promo clip for his charity Fresh2O Water filter - which is said to remove 99.9 per cent of all known "water-borne pathogens, bacteria and viruses" - and drank water from a Thames sewage outlet.
However, his bottle didn't have a filter attached and he caught a virus which weakened his immune system and resulted in him contracting meningitis and cerebral oedema - swelling of his brain.
Speaking to the Sunday Post, he said: "In order to raise funds to get the water filters to Africa, we did a demonstration video down at the Thames next to a sewage outlet.
“The filters remove 99.99% of all known water-borne pathogens, bacteria and viruses.
“So I drank the water for the video and raised the funds but when I went to Glasgow to see my mum for her birthday I collapsed.
"It turned out I had a cerebral oedema where your brain swells bigger than your skull.
“My dad saved my life. He got me to hospital, they diagnosed it quickly. I had bacterial meningitis.
“I had picked up an inflammatory virus from the Thames that had stayed in my system.
“It knocked my white blood cell count out for months and had left my immunity low so that I could have picked up anything going around.
“I had been flying a lot and picked up bacterial meningitis which at that time was on the rise.”
The incident happened in 2015 and his mother Avril Danesh - who was undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy for breast cancer at the time - stayed by his bedside.
He said: "As I came out of the coma I remember my mum sitting beside the bed.
“It felt upside down and wrong because mum was going through cancer treatment,” he said.
“Yet she was sat next to me with tears in her eyes telling my brother that they almost lost me.”
After doctors pinpointed the cause of his illness, Darius was worried the filters didn't work and that people in Africa could get sick as a result.
He said: “I suddenly got a shock, worrying that the water filters didn’t work and that they had been sent off and that other people could have died because of this.
“But other people who drank the water didn’t get sick and it was a huge relief when we found out that the water filter I used was a display model without a filter.
“So, in an inadvertent way, I proved the water filter worked because the others who drank from a bottle with a filter in it, didn’t get sick. That was the silver lining.”
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