Child Specialist

Food poisoning has become quite common these days due to increased consumption of food from outside. Children not only eat burgers, pizza etc but also street made French fries, bun kebab, chips etc. Interestingly, food poisoning has become more common after eating food from high class restaurants. Food poisoning occurs due to eating stale food, left over food, expired food, improperly cooked food and food prepared in unhygienic conditions. Canned juices can also cause food poisoning. The symptoms start within 2-24 hours after eating contaminated food. Initially, there is severe vomiting. The child starts projectile vomiting and cannot tolerate any food. This is accompanied by abdominal pain and fever. This should immediately alert the parents. The vomiting lasts for 3-4 hours with the child unable to eat anything. In this condition, mother should try to give sips of water and ORS; otherwise the child will get dehydrated. Then the diarrhea starts which is very loose and watery. The vo...

A premature newborn is one who is born before 37 weeks of pregnancy, needs lots of special care. The most important thing is to keep the baby warm. This is done by keeping the baby in the incubator which provides the same warmth as in the womb of the mother. This is because the temperature regulation centre of the baby is not yet developed. The lungs of the baby are not developed too. The baby generally has difficulty in breathing. Initially oxygen is given but even then if the baby has respiration difficulty then the baby is put on a ventilator.   In some cases, a special medicine surfactant is added to improve lung maturity. This helps in early maturity of the lungs. The liver is immature too and the newborn is liable to develop physiological jaundice which takes 2-3 weeks to disappear. Due to liver immaturity blood clotting factors are not developed and the baby should urgently be given Vitamin K, otherwise the baby will develop hemorrhages and bleeding. Accordin...