Worry about hand, foot and mouth disease spreading in schools

The number of 3-5 year old children going to school with hand, foot and mouth disease is 11.5% of the total number of children with the disease. In addition, in the two deaths in Ho Chi Minh City since the beginning of the year, one child was a student at a kindergarten (District 3).

Children with hand, foot and mouth disease are treated at Children's Hospital 1, Ho Chi Minh City - Photo: Minh Duc

In Ho Chi Minh City, in January, no school had two or more children with hand, foot and mouth disease, but in February, there were three schools and in March, there were seven schools. Doctor Le Hong Nga, deputy head of the Department of Infectious Disease Control and Biological Vaccines of the Ho Chi Minh City Preventive Medicine Center, said this at a conference to review the work of preventing and combating hand, foot and mouth disease in schools in the first three months of 2012, organized by the City Health Department on the morning of April 4.

High number of sick school children

Dr. Le Minh Hung, deputy head of the medical department of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health, said that the risk of hand, foot and mouth disease in the community is very high because Ho Chi Minh City not only treats patients in the city but also about 50% of patients transferred from other provinces. The number of patients with hand, foot and mouth disease treated in hospitals accounts for only about 10% and the remaining 90% are treated at home and in private clinics. If the locality does not monitor the disease well in the community, children with the disease will spread the disease to other children when they go to school, and the risk of an outbreak in schools is very high.

Meanwhile, Dr. Nguyen Dac Tho, deputy director of the Ho Chi Minh City Center for Preventive Medicine, said that 21.4% of children with hand, foot and mouth disease have a source of infection from children, and the majority of the source of infection is from schools. Children with hand, foot and mouth disease have atypical forms of the disease such as only simple mouth ulcers, very few blisters interspersed with erythema, only erythema without blisters, small dots hidden under the inside of the fingers. When children have these atypical forms of the disease, parents do not recognize them and still send them to school. However, when the disease is transmitted to other children, it can still cause other children to become seriously ill. Not to mention, Dr. Tho emphasized that not only parents but also schools have the phenomenon of hiding the disease.

Education and health sectors must coordinate

Ms. Nguyen Thi Minh Nguyet, Deputy Head of the Department of Education and Training of District 3, Ho Chi Minh City, is worried that the preschool sector is currently lacking many teachers, so if teachers are required to do more environmental sanitation and detect diseases in young children, she does not know if they can handle it. When there is a campaign to suppress epidemics, teachers have to do a lot of extra work, but the school has never had any additional funding for them. Therefore, support options need to be considered.

A representative of the Department of Education and Training of District 8, Ho Chi Minh City also said that in public schools, when a child is found to be sick or suspected of being sick, there are rooms for isolation, but in private childcare groups, there is only one classroom to keep dozens of children. When a disease is detected, where is the isolation? Should teachers be assigned the task of detecting the disease early because in many cases, doctors cannot diagnose the disease! Should health station staff go to schools to grasp the situation, and not just rely on schools to report?

Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Tan Binh, Deputy Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Health, said that to fight the epidemic, it is necessary to mobilize all forces in society, in which the health sector plays a leading role. The number of children with hand, foot and mouth disease of school age has increased and is concentrated in preschools. Therefore, the education sector plays a heavy role in epidemic prevention. Here, the health sector does not require teachers to be like doctors but wants teachers to be like mothers to detect unusual signs in their children, to detect symptoms such as fever, blisters, etc. Of course, the role of the Center for Preventive Medicine is very important in epidemic prevention. Schools with few teachers but many students will be assisted by the Center for Preventive Medicine of Ho Chi Minh City.

According to Tuoitre