Mourning Beautiful Mina: Samoan Mum's Measles Heartbreak

Nuu can’t believe her girl’s gone

- Lynley Ward

Every evening after the sun sets, Nuu Faailo Lameko sets off from her home in Apia and walks under darkening skies to a freshly concreted gravesite.

There she sits, on the edge of the child-sized slab adorned with colourful bouquets, and sings to her 11-month-old daughter Mina.

They’re the same choruses Nuu tenderly comforted her critically ill baby with as the tot lay in a Samoan hospital intensive care unit, measles ravaging her defenseless body just a fortnight ago.

“I would sing my heart out to her,” shares the 34year-old mum. “I always sang at night in the hospital. I would sing Sunday School and gospel songs.”

Tragically within days of coming down with a fever, Lemina Zipporah Bourne became the 24th victim in the Pacific Island nation’s worsening disease outbreak that has seen 62 people die – 54 of them babies – since late October.

Now the devastated mother-of-five is left with photos and memories, mourning the sweet girl who didn’t live to see her first birthday.

“I miss her so much,” cries Nuu. “It’s like a part of me died when she passed. I have older kids but she was just a baby and I gave all my love to her.”

She says her daughter went from being a healthy, cheery bubba to being covered in a rash and gravely ill on life support within a week. It took the desperate mum four visits to the hospital before she was finally admitted.