Health and wellness | Children First

Today, health is seriously threatened by new attacks of infectious diseases that have been under control or have been eliminated, as a result of the general decline in vaccination coverage. Today we face an imminent return to the classroom head-on with the “new normal” and its various perils, so what will parents think?

On July 16, 2020, UNICEF alerted Mexico to a historic decline in vaccination coverage for Mexican children. Some of the vaccines that recorded a sharp drop in supply were the BCG (birthday vaccine), according to reports, only 76% of children in Mexico received this vaccine in 2019, with a 20% drop in 2018. The proportion of children vaccinated against diphtheria and tetanus by 84% in 2019, when those doses of diphtheria-pertussis vaccine reached 99% in 2015 and 90% in 2018.

Thus, the health imbalance caused by the health emergency caused by Covid-19 is worrying, and even more alarming is that they have not been vaccinated against this virus. The Pan American Health Organization has estimated that out of every 10 children who die from Covid-19, another 100 die from vaccine-preventable diseases.

The development of this epidemic has led to the restriction of essential activities, such as: trips to work centers, limitation of passenger transport, the closure of cultural, artistic, sports venues and similar activities; In addition, face-to-face school activity for 138 billion children around the world has been suspended.

However, among the direct effects of Covid-19 on children, we can include: sleep and appetite disturbances, difficulty attending, hyperactivity and irritability. In schoolchildren, symptoms of pain such as heart palpitations, hyperventilation and diarrhea, which are generally associated with somatization processes such as headaches, may appear; Signs of depression may also appear with feelings of sadness and abandonment. Emotional and behavioral regression is more common in preschoolers and young children, but it also occurs in adolescents. The admission of the minor to the hospital exacerbates the reaction to the stress of the disease.

This is alarming, because in recent years there has been an increase in the number of cases of pneumonia, as well as invasive diseases. It also states that pediatric experience globally agrees that most patients are asymptomatic or have mild to moderate illness. However, in the past two months, children with a significant systemic inflammatory response have been identified. This group of patients required focused care and multidisciplinary participation from doctors, that is, Covid and its various strains are becoming more aggressive and now with infants. This particular syndrome shares characteristics with other pediatric inflammatory processes: Kawasaki disease, toxic shock syndrome, bacterial sepsis, and an exaggerated immune response that can be harmful and even fatal.

It is usually manifested by severe abdominal pain and high levels of signs of inflammation. Our current challenges are not only to overcome parents’ fear of taking their children to hospitals and health centers for vaccination, but to avoid as many missed opportunities as possible due to a lack of vaccines, as already mentioned with the BCG vaccine. . , which have been deprived for long periods of the population under the pretext of depleting their supplies at the national level, which is reflected in the increase in dangerous forms of tuberculosis. Coming back to the chapters to come, we see the new strains and as if that weren’t enough we haven’t yet seen the damage caused by a lack of vaccination.