HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5286, 24 December 1946, Page 3

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

CHILD-REN'S UPSETS (By the Department of Health) In summer time — picnic time, holiday time — the children's routine is apt to become disorgansed, A party can he followred by vomiting", and rest less night, with a pale, droopy child next day, off his food. Plenty to ' •drink, more rest the next day and ' early to bed that night and usualiy all is well. But you have always to ■be on the lookout wdien there is change from the normal in a child. If it is a runny nose, with sneezes, face hot and flushed, it may be just a cold. The wisest course is to keep the child in bed until you know he is not" getting worse or developing some iniectious disease. If the throat betomes sore, the restlessness amd flushing stay, and the child seems sick, it may be a septie throat, but it might be diphtheria, especially if he has not 'been immunised and given i relative protection. It might be scarlet fever. So you will keep a weather ej'e open for rashes. A chickenpox rash comes out early. So does a scarlet fever rash, at the end of the first or during the second day. The rash of measles comes out about the fourth day. But rashes are not always due to infectious diseasas. In the hot weather a rash may be due to prickly heat. Or due to a food upset or an unaccustomed food. Or due to bed ■bugs or fieas. Be guided by the type of "the rash and the general state of the child. If you are unsure about a rash call the doctor. If a sore throat is a very definite sympton, you will always be wiser to call the doctor because of the diphtheria risk. If you make it a rule to adopt a watchful, waiting attitude wnen your child is off colour — a day or half-day in ,bod, until you feel sure nothing serious is developing, rnost times the child recovers from what has been a previous day's upset. Hifi not; you get on to the flu or infectious diseass early and in addition limit the spread of infection in what is always the worst time for spreading troubles — the first days of a communcable discase.