A mum from Llandudno is urging other parents to be aware of the symptoms of Strep A infections after her two daughters contracted scarlet fever. Joanne Jones' eight-year-old daughter Jasmine started feeling unwell with a cough, which she initially mistook for a chest infection. However, her symptoms got progressively worse.
“Then it turned into some kind of sickness bug, so I thought she had one of those 24-hour things. But after four days of hardly eating, I knew it wasn’t just a bug. At times she seemed OK. Then her temperature would spike to 40 degrees," Joanne told North Wales Live.
“She would go bright red, and it felt like I was holding a hot water bottle from the heat coming off her face, back, and chest. Then she got more and more drowsy nearing the end of the week, to the point she just couldn’t stop coughing.
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“She was leaning into me, falling asleep on the street. Then I noticed she had a rash like a strawberry on her tongue, and a rash came out on her cheeks, but it can also be on children’s chest and back. I took her into A&E at 2am, waiting nine and a half hours to see someone before he said, ‘I don’t want to alarm you with what’s in the media, but she’s got scarlet fever, which comes from a bacterial infection called strep A’.
“So I said, ‘the one that’s killed children on the news?’, and he looked at me and said ‘yes’. He gave me a prescription to start with immediate effect, and I was told to keep all three of my children off school as it’s highly contagious.”
Although Streptococcus A infections are common, most often causing a relatively mild illness, nine children from across the UK have died in recent weeks after developing a rare complication. Public Health Wales says the complication, known as iGAS, is an invasive infection but rare.
Figures released this week show that scarlet fever is on the rise. Between January and October this year, there have been 1,512 recorded cases of scarlet fever in the UK, which is caused by Strep A, compared to 948 in the same period last year. Strep A can also cause other types of infections, including throat, chest, and skin infections.
Joanne added after seven days, Jasmine is on her fifth penicillin tablet and is only just starting to get her appetite back. But now her youngest daughter Ophelia, three, has also caught the infection - and she is worried it’s only a matter of time before her six-year-old son Louie also catches the bug.
“Last night Ophelia was getting the exact same symptoms, a red rash on her face and spots on her tongue. Her temp was 39.3 degrees. She was coughing and sick. I called 111 who got me in touch with the out-of-hours, and they said they didn’t need to see her since her sister had it, so we could assume that’s what it was, and they left a prescription for the same drugs for me, which she started this morning.”
Joanne said her children also had white patches in their throats that were difficult to see as well as swollen glands. She wants to warn other parents to act quickly if they thought their children were poorly. “If something doesn’t seem right, go straight to the doctor,” she said.
“One minute they seem completely fine and just turn so quickly. In the doctor’s surgery, they are so quick to palm you off with a viral infection and no treatment. They don’t like handing antibiotics out.
“I genuinely think the only reason my daughter was thoroughly checked was because we had sat waiting in A&E for nine hours, so they felt obliged. In a surgery, doctors could be telling a lot of people it’s just viral and sending them home two or three times before parents go back.”
She added: “It’s not good enough. If it’s left, it’s life-threatening.” Speaking on behalf of Public Health Wales, Dr Graham Brown, consultant in communicable disease control, told North Wales Live: “While we understand that parents are likely to be worried by reports they are seeing related to iGAS, the condition remains rare.
“Cold and flu-like symptoms are very common at this time of year, especially in children. Most will have a common seasonal virus, which can be treated by keeping the child hydrated and with paracetamol.
“Some children with cold and flu-like symptoms - sore throat, headache, fever - may be experiencing some of the early symptoms of scarlet fever, which also circulates at this time of year. These children will go on to develop scarlet fever-specific symptoms, including a fine pink-red rash that feels like sandpaper to touch, and parents should contact their GP.
“While scarlet fever is more concerning, it is still usually a mild illness from which most children will recover without complications, especially if the condition is properly treated with antibiotics.
“In very rare cases, group A streptococcal infection can cause iGAS, a rare complication which affects fewer than 20 children in Wales each year. Although iGAS is a worrying condition, the majority of these children will recover with proper treatment.
“The best thing that parents can do is to provide the care they would usually provide for a child with cold and flu-like symptoms, but to familiarise themselves with the symptoms of scarlet fever and iGAS as a precaution.
“It is also important that children from two years upwards are protected from seasonal flu and have the vaccine.”
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