Saturday, June 25, 2011

New cases of respiratory syncytial virus infection in children

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A week after the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) prompted an alert
by the health minister, Jaime Manalich, it has been reported that
"there is still a substantial increase in cases in the need of
hospitalization." This is because 90 per cent of children who are
referred to health services with respiratory problems require hospital
admission: in 8 out of 10 such cases the infection can lead to
pneumonia.

"800 new cases of RSV infection in children are being recorded every
week,"
according to the secretary of state. For his part,
under-secretary for health care Luis Castillo said that so far 231 new
beds had been provided in addition to the 535 beds already converted
as part of the Winter Plan, to provide in total 766 additional
pediatric beds in the system. A total of 8 hospitals (Roberto del
Río, Exequiel Gonzalez Cortes, Sotero del Rio, Calvo Mackenna, Padre
Hurtado, Gustavo Fricke, Van Buren and Felix Bulnes) are providing
ventilators and monitors to convert beds to acute care facilities.

The under-secretary stated that this weekend the directors of health
services in the metropolitan region and the areas with the highest
incidence of RSV infection will take steps to verity that the the
network is fully functional. "We have organized a series of hospital
visits for this weekend. In addition information will be circulated
online to monitor the situation in the emergency care network in order
to respond immediately to demands," said Castillo.

Also from this Friday [24 Jun 2011] until 31 Jul 2011, the army will
also be supporting the public health system in dealing with RSV.

--
communicated by:
HealthMap alerts via ProMED-mail
<promed@promedmail.org>

[The delayed appearance of the winter influenza virus season in the
Southern Hemisphere (see ProMed-mail report archived as: Influenza
(42): WHO update 20110623.1921) has revealed the acute stress placed
on health services in some countries (for example, Chile and some
other South American countries particularly) by the recurrent annual
outbreaks of RSV infection affecting children in these countries.

RSV is a respiratory virus that infects the lungs and breathing
passages. Most otherwise healthy people recover from RSV infection in
1 to 2 weeks. However, infection can be severe in some people, such as
certain infants, young children, and older adults. RSV is the
commonest cause of bronchiolitis (inflammation of the small airways in
the lung) and pneumonia in children under 1 year of age. In addition,
RSV is more often being recognized as an important cause of
respiratory illness (and death) in older adults.

People infected with RSV are usually contagious for 3 to 8 days.
However, some infants and people with weakened immune systems can be
contagious for as long as 4 weeks. RSV is often introduced into the
home by school-aged children who are infected with RSV and have a mild
upper respiratory tract infection, such as a cold. RSV can be rapidly
transmitted to other members of the family, often infecting about half
of other household members.

In temperate climates, RSV infections generally occur during autumn,
winter, and early spring. The timing and severity of RSV circulation
in a given community can vary from year to year. There is currently no
vaccine available.

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