'Hot' warning: Risk of hand, foot and mouth disease outbreak

The Department of Preventive Medicine (Ministry of Health) warns that the current changing of seasons is the time when hand, foot and mouth disease in children is at risk of increasing and causing an outbreak if not prevented in time.

Illustration photo. Source Internet

The disease can be fatal.

Associate Professor, Dr. Tran Dac Phu, Director of the Department of Preventive Medicine, said that hand, foot and mouth disease is an acute viral infection transmitted through the digestive tract, commonly found in young children and has the potential to cause large epidemics. The disease is easily transmitted to others if hygiene is not ensured. In Vietnam, the number of cases of this disease tends to increase from March to May and from September to December.

The disease is most contagious during the first week after a patient becomes infected and can last for several weeks as the virus resides in the stool.

Typical symptoms of the disease are fever, sore throat, lesions of the oral mucosa and skin, mainly in the form of blisters commonly found on the palms, soles, knees, and buttocks. Most cases are mild. However, in some cases, the disease can progress severely and cause dangerous complications such as encephalitis - meningitis, myocarditis, acute pulmonary edema leading to death, so it needs to be detected early and treated promptly.

Children are susceptible to disease.

The Director of the Department of Preventive Medicine analyzed that the reason hand, foot and mouth disease often increases sharply and breaks out during the school year is because the disease is transmitted through the digestive tract, often occurs in young children and has the potential to cause large epidemics through contact.

The transmission mechanism of hand, foot and mouth disease is usually direct transmission through the digestive tract when eating together or coming into contact with the secretions of an infected child, or indirect transmission through hands or objects contaminated with the virus, so it is very contagious in the common living environment of children in classrooms and kindergartens.

The worrying thing is that if just one child has hand, foot and mouth disease, the children around can be infected at any time.

Hand, foot and mouth disease mainly occurs in children under 10 years of age, usually in children under 5 years of age. The younger the child, the more severe the symptoms. However, anyone who has not had the disease before is at risk of infection through contact with contaminated objects or surfaces touched by an infected person, but not everyone infected with the virus will show symptoms of the disease.

Children are at higher risk of contracting the virus and getting sick because their resistance and immunity are weaker than adults. Most adults are immune, but cases of teenagers and adults getting infected with the virus are not uncommon.

Pregnant women need to prevent the disease and should not have close contact with infected people because there is a possibility of infection and transmission of the virus to the baby right before or during birth. It is worth noting that a person can be infected with hand, foot and mouth disease many times because each time the body is infected, it only creates antibodies to a certain type of virus. Therefore, even if the patient has been infected before, he or she can still get the disease again if infected with another virus in the Enterovirus group.

According to TPO