A five-year-old girl has died after being admitted to hospital with a reported Strep A infection.
It is understood that the young girl became unwell last week and was taken to the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children but sadly passed away on Monday night, the BBC reports.
The young girl attended Black Mountain Primary School.
Read more: NI GP on what symptoms to look out for amid rising Scarlet fever and Strep A cases among kids
Parents at the school had been sent a letter last week saying that one of the pupils had been diagnosed with a severe form of Step A.
There has been a rise in rare invasive Group A strep this year, particularly in children under 10, the UK Health Security Agency has said. Group A strep bacteria can cause many different infections, ranging from minor illnesses to deadly diseases.
In November, 104 cases of scarlet fever were reported.
The range of illnesses includes the skin infection impetigo, scarlet fever and strep throat. While the vast majority of infections are relatively mild, sometimes the bacteria cause a life-threatening illness called invasive Group A Streptococcal disease.
Dr Ursula Mason, chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners and a GP Partner in Carryduff Surgery explained the outbreak to Belfast Live.
"The two infections are caused by the same Streptococcus bacteria, which either causes a scarlet fever or it can cause the invasive Group A Strep disease. There are some situations where one might lead to the other but more than not it's two separate entities," Dr Mason told Belfast Live.
"The reality is that we're seeing an increasing number of children at the moment with lots of respiratory illnesses regardless, including sore throats and tonsillitis, and because Group A Strep is a bacteria, you can have them happening at the same time or in isolation of each other.
"We have circulating RSV and flu every year and scarlet fever and Group A Strep infections have also been increasing year-on-year to a larger degree so we're seeing this in the younger population anyway. But we are seeing increasing numbers who are developing this scarlet fever type picture and that is a tonsillitis but it's also associated with very specific features such as paler ring around the mouth, strawberry tongue and a sandpaper rash.
"Tonsillitis will present in a lot of children as a sore throat, puss in the tonsils and a high temperature but scarlet fever has those other additional features, more often than not. We are seeing more of that in our surgeries at the moment but we're also seeing the other respiratory illnesses and tonsillitis so it's trying to discern one from the other and make sure that parents and carers are getting the right advice about managing these conditions".
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