Swine Flu and Little Kids

by Alanna Shaikh · 2009-08-29 04:16:00 UTC
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(Munch painting. Image credit: Free Parking)

I don't want to be a scaremonger, but if you have a small child, now would be a good time to get very, very serious about teaching handwashing. As a mom of a three-year old, I know how hard it is to keep toddlers healthy. They touch everything, and they put their hands in their mouths constantly. But swine flu is spreading - either still or again, and with school starting again I worry about the little kids.

Statistically small children are a risk group for serious cases of H1N1. Kids under 5 have one of the highest mortality rates from swine flu. And, as everyone who's ever had a kid under five knows, they get sick all the time. Picture a small child. Is their nose running? Yeah, I thought so. We just get used to them always having some kind of virus. In the case, though, the virus is bad enough we need to really work to prevent it.

It's a lot more scary when the virus is H1N1. We don't really know if Tamiflu works in kids, and we're seeing resistance to Tamiflu anyway. We know that swine flu spreads fast in crowded environments like schools. And we still don't have a vaccination that works for swine flu.

Now you're panicking. (Well, I am.) What do we do at this point? How did I calm down enough to sleep at night? Well, like I started out, we get a lot stricter about washing hands. With kids who hate handwashing  (which is all of them) you can use hand sanitizing gel. If your child's school or daycare is closed for flu, keep her at home. Don't send her to a babysitter or use the closing for a trip to the zoo. If your school has identified a need for social isolation, respect that. Finally, once a seasonal flu vaccine is available, get it for your child. No one knows if it helps with swine flu, but it's not going to hurt, and it will definitely protect him from seasonal flu.

Alanna Shaikh
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