N.S. couple raising money for hospital that tried to save their daughter

Since the start of October, this couple has covered hundreds of kilometers of Nova Scotia roads and trails, with the memory of their daughter Lupin always close by. It's nice to kind of keep her so close. Yeah, connect with her again. For her first three weeks of life, Lupin was healthy. But then, suddenly, she fell seriously ill. We went from the highest high, the biggest dream of our lives you could imagine, to truly the worst nightmare. It was a bacterial infection, group B streptococcus, or GBS. In adults, it's usually harmless. But in infants, it's a leading cause of some life-threatening illnesses, including sepsis and meningitis. Lupin developed both. She spent five days in intensive care at the IWK Children's Hospital. But clinicians could not save her. She died at less than one month old. It is a very sudden onset disease. This physician says by the time babies start getting medical care for GBS, they're already very sick. Even our best treatment will not catch up in some cases. And so preventing this disease is the best strategy. If a pregnant woman carries GBS, she can take antibiotics during labor to protect her baby. But the protection only lasts a week. When the illness comes on later, like it did with lupin, Dr. Langley says vaccination is the solution. Researchers have been trying to develop a GBS vaccine for decades. Now, they're close. This will be just an overwhelming advance in the care of women and babies. It's a worldwide problem and kind of very weirdly serendipitous that a phase 3 trial would be happening in Nova Scotia the summer after she died. The grieving parents are pushing themselves through all kinds of weather. Part of the reason for the bike ride is to process their grief. I just want to be more active physically for my own mental health. They're also raising money for the hospital that treated Lupin. And they want to spread the word about this new vaccine. The more I learn about GBS, the more passionate I feel about making sure something is done to hopefully prevent other families from going through what we went through. Pfizer is testing the vaccine for safety in pregnant women around the world. Depending on how trials go and regulatory approvals, it could be widely available in the next few years. The World Health Organization says vaccines could reduce infant GBS cases by half. Taryn Grant, CBC News, Wolfville.