CHILDREN’S HEALTH: STREP THROAT
Symptoms: headache; fever; sore, red throat; vomiting; abdominal pain; swollen lymph glands in neck; sandpaper rash.
Home care: give aspirin or paracetamol to relieve pain and fever and take the child to the doctor.
Precautions
- Keep infants away from groups of children, some of whom may be carriers of the strep bacteria.
- If one child has a strep infection, your other children should receive a throat j culture whether they are sick or not.
- A strep infection imparts immunity only to the particular type of bacteria that caused it: there are over 60 types of streptococcus organisms.
Strep throat is a highly contagious infection of the throat, usually caused by the group A strain of beta-hemolytic streptococci bacteria. Although some strep germs do not cause rashes, most types can produce a toxin (poison) that causes the rash that typifies scarlet fever (also commonly called scarlatina). There are at least 60 different types of streptococcus organisms. After an attack of strep throat the individual is immune to further attack from that one type of streptococcus organism only.
A streptococcal infection can be serious. Among its complications are rheumatic fever, nephritis (inflammation of the kidneys), middle ear infection, sinusitis, pneumonia, and transient (temporary) arthritis.
The incubation period (the time it takes for symptoms to develop once the child has been exposed to the bacteria) of strep throat is two to five days, and the disease is passed from child to child by means of the throat or nasal secretions of an infected person. It may also be spread by a carrier who has no symptoms of the illness. (A carrier is a person who harbors the disease-causing organism and can pass it on to others, but does not get sick him-or herself.) At times, as many as half the children in any one area may be carriers of the disease.
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