Your choice of day care affects your child’s health

Your choice of day care affects your child’s health

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Most parents know that getting the right day care centre for their children is a difficult task. Keeping them healthy, while they are at school, is even a tougher  task for the managers of these centres.

They have to deal with children who may develop an array of health issues, such as ear infections, colds, coughs, sore throats, runny noses, fever and diarrhoea at any time. If anything goes wrong, they are usually blamed for it.

A worried mother once stopped her three year-old son from attending a day care centre because he had developed a running nose (catarrh) three weeks after he was enrolled at the centre.

According to her, the ailment was still bothering her son after several visits to the hospital. She claimed that other children at the centre had been having catarrh and she was convinced that her son contracted the infection at the day care.

A second incident occurred in a preschool: the proprietress had to ride on a commercial motorcycle for the first time in her life to get a five year-old boy who had convulsed repeatedly to a health centre.

The boy died at the hospital. The school was found wanting as it had no first-aid materials, school nurse or health personnel that could have offered first-aid treatment to the sick child. The parents were also not called on phone until the child died.

The school was sued for negligence and was suspended by the regulatory body till they had fulfilled the basic requirements for establishing a pre-school.

The post mortem result, however, revealed that the boy died of asphyxia probably from repeated seizure and meningitis, which was due to a chronic ear infection that had not been treated over time.

In spite of the post mortem result, the school had already taken the blame for the unfortunate incident.

To avoid ugly situations like these, here are some suggestions for caregivers and managers of day care centres on how they can make their facilities safe and healthy havens for children:

Pre-entrance screening should be conducted for children by qualified medical personnel. This will help to detect communicable diseases, developmental delays and also disorders, such as autism, that can be picked at an early stage.

Cleanliness: The centres should be cleaned each day with safe, non-toxic cleaning products. Cleaning supplies are locked safely out of the reach of children. While other child care providers clean toys each evening, sanitise toys throughout the day to help prevent the spread of germs.

Hand washing:  Encourage children to wash their hands throughout the day. By demonstrating with songs and using other methods, teach them the importance of hygiene.

Medications: Introduce strict policies for administering medication to the children and ensure that the medications are safe and protected. Based on new research about healthy practices for infants and toddlers, a doctor’s note should be issued for any medication, prescription or drug purchased over the counter given to a child under two years to ensure safety.

Child protection: Hidden cameras should be an essential component of a good day care centre. This will allow the day care managers to monitor their staff, children, visitors and parents. Mothers who may be suspicious of wrong doing on the child can request a playback.

Dedicated and friendly caregivers, nannies who are trained in child development, early childhood education or related fields, should be employed to take care of the children. All staff and teachers are to be trained in first-aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Caregivers and nannies must be screened annually for communicable diseases. They are to do chest x-rays, stool tests, mantoux, typhoid screening etc annually in order to prevent the spread of communicable diseases from a care giver to the children.

Parents are required to keep their children at home, if they are having diarrhoea, vomiting (after two consecutive bouts), running a temperature of 38 C or over,   having ear ache, severe headache or stiffness in the neck.

Children afflicted with lice, chicken pox, measles, mumps, meningitis, impetigo (skin infection) and pneumonia should not come to school to avoid the infections from spreading.

Day care centres must have a special room that may also serve as a sick bay. The service of a school nurse may be needed to render first-aid treatment.

In conclusion, children in these centres are more likely to catch infections than others who do not attend day care.  However, being around a large number of germs in day care may improve children’s immunity.

Also due to the alarming rates of child abuse in the country, female children should be protected from the male workers (male guards, male security and male drivers to prevent sexual abuse).

PUNCH.

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