Childhood Infections

Introduction: Infection in child hood is very common due to undeveloped immunity or due to lack of immunity, when a child is in the womb of mother he or she gets immunity from his mother but after birth it is very tough to rid off form infectious diseases. There for vaccines are given to the child to protect from various communicable diseases.

Causing Agents: These childhood infections occur due to very small single cell prokaryotic organism e.g. bacteria or acellular (Virus) and some protozoa (eukaryotic unicellular organism).These are known as pathogen. This pathogen can be transmitted by carrier or by vector or may be directly from one infected person to another person.

Mode of transmission: These diseases are transmitted by many means first one is contaminated or unhygienic food and contaminated or not treated water e.g. Typhoid, Hepatitis B, Jaundice and cholera.  Last one is contaminated air, last one is the very potent mode of transmission in which pathogen can be transmitted by simply sneezing and coughing of the infected person and the healthy person can get infected by simply inhaling to those Pathogen.e.g. Tuberculosis,Chickenpox,Pneumonia etc.

There are so many child hood infectious diseases which are fatal for kids, here, a list of infectious diseases and there causing agents are given:

1. Hepatitis B ————– Hepatitis B Virus,

2. Whooping cough—— Bordetella pertussis

3. Small pox—————- Variola virus

4. Tetanus——————- Closteridium tetani,

5. Polio———————– Polio virus

6. Pneumonia ————– S. Pneumoniae

7. Diptheria —————– Corynebacterium diphtheria,

8. Measels——————- Paramyxovirus

9. Mumps——————– Mumps virus

10. Typhoid——————- S. typhi.

Prevention of diseases: To prevent these childhood diseases some precaution should be maintain for example personal hygine and sanatisation secondaly vaccination and third is immunization. Personal hygine and sanitization is not as much effective as vaccination and immunization as it does not provide immunity against pathogen only it prevents, while vaccination and immunization increase immunity and provides ability to fight against diseases, this type of immunization of a baby is called as active immunization. Active Immunization of a baby can be achieved by vaccinating them time to time of a time interval.

Some children also have allergic diseases which are non communicable occurs by immunogenic response of our body like respiratory diseases, red patches on skin and many more. The factors which are responsible for allergy is called as allergen e.g. dust, pollen, milk, egg, fish etc.

Apart from this common cold, cough, fever, cholera, dysentery and gastritis is also a common childhood infection which can be prevented by personal hygiene and sanitization of baby, also we should provide hygienic food to them to overcome from these problems, always cut their nails, wash their hands before and after meal, after use of washroom after sneezing and coughing and after playing with toy, normal shop solution or hand wash does not work on bacteria and other pathogen they only wash dirt and pollutant from our hand. To wash bacteria and other pathogen one should use hand wash which should contain at least 60% alcohol because it is a potent sanitizer works effectively.