Infections in Children: Recognizing and Responding to Pediatric Cases
It must be difficult for you as a parent to witness your child battle yet another infection all by themselves. Across all age groups, children are particularly vulnerable to a variety of infectious disorders brought on by bacteria, viruses, or fungi. As a parent, you tend to take no infection lightly. This short read dives deeper into how you can contribute to improving your child’s health in such unwelcome instances.
1. Always Be Armed, No Matter What
The infection that invades your child’s body never announces its arrival. The body’s immunity is not fully capable of fighting off certain infections at these tender ages. Some illnesses such as chicken pox, common cold, and strep throat ought to affect your child on a sure-shot basis. Other symptoms that require you to pay a visit to your doctor include diarrhea, vomiting, fever that would not subside, earache, and skin rashes, among many others. The list is seemingly endless. Your child’s sickness, however, need not be!
2. Track Down the Source
Yes, children indeed fall sick from time to time owing to their developing immune systems. The freedom from worrying about anything, even your health, is the nicest thing about being a child!
So as a parent, you need to be mindful of your child’s daily companions, the environment they play in, the food they consume, and the hygiene they practice. Due to their basic nature, these things are simple to overlook. Infections spread through establishing contact with an infected person - direct or indirect. Other means of transmission include tainted food, air, water, dust, and allergens. Although it is impossible for you to influence every factor listed here, you must act on the ones under your power.
3. Prerequisites For A Sick Child
A sick child is one of the worst sights for any parent. Seeing your child in such agonizing distress must make every parent feel helpless. But, to a child, your presence alone does half the magic! If the symptoms are seemingly serious, you should schedule an appointment with your trusted pediatrician right away. You should be mindful of not making the mistake of diagnosing your child’s condition all by yourself.
4. This Calls For An Emergency
Embrace your gut feeling when it tells you something is off-beat about your child. There are indications that point out your ward is battling a serious infection. A high temperature accompanied by cold hands and feet, rapid breathing, blue or pale skin, unexpected seizures, strangely green vomit, or a disoriented and confused state of a child - all warrant an immediate visit to the pediatrician on call.
5. Don’t Wait and Watch
At times, parents tend to wait for their child to get better on their own rather than visiting a doctor. But, at times, the once-trivial infection could develop into a life-threatening condition called sepsis if the child receives untimely treatment. It is the strongest reaction your body can produce to combat an illness. While fighting an infection, the immune system may get triggered to act abnormally, resulting in a blatant attack on your organs and tissues, causing sepsis. This drives your body to go into multisystem organ failure. Recovery from sepsis is akin to a fresh start.
It is imperative for you to understand how crucial the immunization appointments are for your child's health. Being vaccinated prevents your child from acquiring dangerous infections. Teaching your child the good habit of washing hands before meals or after using the toilet and covering their mouth while coughing or sneezing goes a long way in staving off unwanted infections. It is precarious to take your child’s infection in light since, if left untreated, even minor infections have the potential to worsen and become life-threatening.
