“Sir it is my 3rd visit in last two days yet fever continues: educated mom complaint with tears in her eyes”.
Two days back she came for an emergency visit child was sent back home with a prescription of Paracetamol, next day morning she revisited, child was investigated, and it was a simple viral fever she was advised to keep patience, yet she was back to me with more anxiety.
This is a usual phenomenon, an everyday problem.
A layman feels that fever is the disease but that is not true, fever is not a disease it could be sign of Malaria, Typhoid, pneumonia, flu etc..; in other words fever is a sign of some disease and not a disease itself.
Whenever a microbe (Germ) invades child’s body fever appears; there are scientific proofs that this increased body temperature helps in clearing offending germs from the human body. In other words in majority of cases fever is a body reaction to germs which perform a friendly act against disease producing microbes.
Unfortunately parent’s mind has a tremendous fever phobia, they feel that elevated body temperature is harmful to their child and at any cost they want it to decrease, in the bargain they tend to over treat child with fever medicines, demand for harmful medicines and resort to cold sponging; all of these things are not only necessary but many a times downright harmful.
When I ask them what are you scared of, the commonest answer is brain damage. Fever per se never cause brain damage unless it is too high. Too high is more than 105 which a very rare occurrence; in my pediatricians’ career spanning over 37yeras it has occurred just five times. Most of the time body has mechanism to balance fever; it would not let it go to a harmful level.
There are certain children who may have fit with fever but they are different lot and not every child is going to react same way.
Over all fever is not harmful and this phobia is out of place, moreover it is the disease which is damaging and not the fever, for example 1010F fever of Falciparum malaria (Zehari malaria) could be many fold more dangerous than 1040F of Vivax malaria (Sado malaria).
Fever medicines (crocin, metacin, calpol) only decrease the fever, they cannot eradicate it; unless a disease is cured by specific medicines fever is going to continue in child‘s body for few days, in case of viral fevers medicines hardly work however body’s own immunity gets over the problem within few days, till then one has to keep patience, and do not have to behave as if fever is a DEMON.
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