Pre-School and Daycare Vaccines: Fomites and Kindergarten

I am graduating several kids from my pre-school this year to kindergarten. This is as big a move for the parents as it is for the kids. At one round-up, the gymnasium was filled with kids being "watched" so the parents could tour the facility without their little student in tow. As one parent commented on the experience, "I was worried about our child catching a cold in your small group".

Catching a cold, it turns out, is a natural part of the childhood experience. There are, however guidelines to keeping your child safe and the children around them - although your best efforts will be thwarted by the parents who, because of work obligations or because they simply do not care about the group, will bring a child with a fever. But what about the running nose, the cold, the winter crud that makes your child feel listless, less alert and just plain crummy?

A study was done on infants with the flu, a potentially deadly complications for kids this young. The researchers found that if you simply sit in the run with the sick child, you will not get the infection. If you touch what the child touched or cuddled the sick child, you would. In other words, your child's health in in the hands - their hands, the other kids hands and t o some degree, your hands as well.

In a daycare or preschool situation, providers spend a good deal of time making sure that hands are clean, toys and other objects stay away from the face, and that those toys and objects are regularly cleaned. But your child is only here Monday through Friday and those nasty germs, viruses and related bacteria are everywhere.

The term pediatricians often use is shedding viruses. This can occur before the child shows symptoms, during the child's illness and even after the fact. Because you cannot keep every child home the entire winter - pediatricians also suggest that missing school is far worse than the overall effect of the illness - unless they are really sick, you should consider their advice.

Children should be fully immunized against pertussis (whooping cough) and measles, for example, and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends an annual flu shot for all children from 6 months to 18 years old. A child with a fever (or is vomiting) is another matter entirely. You may be tempted to load your child up with ibuprofen and drop them off, hoping for the best. But your provider or teacher knows your child better in many cases, than you do. If you do something like this, you will probably get a call.

Dr. Caroline Breese Hall, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at the University of Rochester has said, “Taking one child out of the school who sits next to your child is going to do little when your child goes into the lunchroom and there are secretions all over the table. You cannot focus on one sick child because there’s a world of much cleverer microbes.”

Wash, wash your hands and do it again. And be sure to teach your child the same sanitation. It can only help.