Rosamund Kissi-Debrah’s daughter died 10 years ago – now the government must do the ‘honourable thing’, she says
“One of Ella’s dying wishes was that her siblings, who were really young, wouldn’t forget her and she also didn’t want her friends to forget her, obviously. She said to me: “‘Oh Mum. I hope they will remember me,” said Rosamund Kissi-Debrah recently. “I think Ella would like the fact that when you show her picture now, or you mention her name, most people know who she is.”
Ella’s fame is tragic: she died, aged nine, after an acute asthma attack in south London on 15 February 2013. She had had more than 25 emergency hospital admissions in the previous three years. In 2020, a landmark coroner’s report made Ella the first person in the world to have air pollution cited as a cause of death.
