Preventive measures for hand, foot and mouth disease

  Hand, foot and mouth disease is a viral infectious disease that occurs in infants and children. It is mainly characterized by the appearance of rashes or vesicle-like particles on the hands, feet and mouth, and generally recovers within a week with timely treatment. However, there are individual children with severe disease who develop the disease more rapidly and die.  Since HFMD is a germ that can be transmitted directly and indirectly, children should be isolated as soon as they are found to have the disease in order to prevent transmission to others. In addition, parents also need to take precautions on a daily basis to prevent their children from being affected by this disease.  Personal precautions: 1. Wash children’s hands with soap or hand sanitizer before and after meals and after going out, do not let children drink raw water or eat cold food, and avoid contact with sick children.  2. Caregivers should wash their hands before touching children, after changing diapers for children, and after handling feces, and dispose of dirt properly.  3.Bottles and pacifiers used by infants and children should be washed well before and after use.  4. During the epidemic period, children should not be taken to public places with poor air circulation, and attention should be paid to maintaining the hygiene of the home environment, frequent ventilation of the living room, and regular drying of clothes and blankets.  5.Children should go to medical institutions promptly when symptoms appear. For children treated at home, do not contact other children, parents should dry or disinfect the affected children’s clothes, and disinfect the affected children’s feces in a timely manner; children with minor illnesses do not need to be hospitalized, but should be treated and rested at home to reduce cross-infection.  Treatment principle: The treatment principle of HFMD is mainly symptomatic treatment, vitamin B, C and antiviral drugs can be taken, and patients with comorbidities can be injected with gammaglobulin. During the child’s illness, parents should strengthen care, help children to do a good job of oral hygiene, rinse the mouth with saline or warm water before and after eating, food should be liquid and semi-liquid and other non-irritating food is appropriate. Because HFMD can be combined with myocarditis, encephalitis, meningitis, flaccid paralysis and other diseases, the child should be timely consultation and review.  Experts remind the public: during the HFMD epidemic, parents should go home and change the clothes they wear in the workplace, wash their hands, then go into the kitchen to prepare food and hold their children to play. When feeding babies, some bad habits must be changed. For example, some parents chew the food in their own mouth before feeding, or test the temperature with their lips, etc. These are dangerous behaviors to spread the virus.