Care for child

Health of a child is a major issue that concerns the majority of parents. One of the foremost duties of parents is to encourage a child to lead a healthy life. Parents can have a positive impact on the health of their children simply by setting a beneficial example.

Children and teens that are overweight and in poor physical shape are likely to suffer from a host of health related problems. Hence it is imperative for parents to participate in sports and physical activities together with their children.

Parents should encourage their children to take part in games and physical activities when they are young and try to convince them into making it a part of their lives.

• In order to keep a child in good health, parents should accompany their children on daily walks since walking is an exercise that is considered extremely useful in keeping children in proper shape.
• Parents should try to give swimming lessons to their children since swimming is considered an extremely useful exercise in ensuring good physical condition of those who take part in it.
• Tennis and bicycling are regarded as excellent family activities and parents should see to it that their children are appropriately engaged in such activities.
• Physical exercise together with a proper diet can ensure the proper health of children.
• Calcium assists in developing strong bones and teeth.
• Milk in addition to milk products are excellent sources of calcium.
• Hence parents ought to see that a child gets sufficient amounts of milk and milk product for the overall development of their body.

Children should be served with vegetables rich in calcium such as broccoli, mustard greens, kale, collard greens, and brussels sprouts.

High-calcium beans such as black turtle beans, great northern beans, baked beans and navy beans in casseroles and salads are also extremely beneficial for the health of growing children. Soy enriched in calcium together with rice-based drinks is also ideally suited for the proper growth and development of children.

Children often hurt their wrist after falls playing sports or riding their bike, etc., causing sprains and sometimes a broken wrist.

While your child may just have a sprained wrist if he has fallen, it is important to make sure that it isn’t actually broken instead. If your child can’t move his hand or wrist, is in severe pain, has numbness, or the bone ‘looks’ broken, then see your pediatrician or go to the emergency room. For a sprain, common first aid includes the basic RICE treatments, including:

• Rest
• Ice
• Compassion with an ace bandage, etc.
• Elevation

Information

As a general rule, medical or surgical procedures in Ireland may not be carried out without the informed consent of the patient.

The law is not clear on what should happen in cases where the patient is unable to give consent because, for example, of a mental disorder or because he/she is comatose. Similarly, the question of what consent is required in the case of children is not totally clear.

There are detailed rules about the conduct of clinical trials and the information that must be given to participants in these trials.

Rules

What is consent

In general, valid consent must be informed consent. The law is not clear on exactly how much information a doctor must give a patient. Consent is now legally defined for the purposes of psychiatric treatment but not for other treatment.

If there is no consent

If a person carries out medical or surgical procedures without consent, he/she could be charged with the crime of assault – the decision on charges is made by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

He/she could also be sued for the tort (civil wrong) of trespass to the person and possibly for breach of constitutional rights. If the person involved is a medical professional, he/she could also be sued for negligence. The patient may take these actions.

Competence to give consent

If you are a mentally competent adult, there is no doubt about the need for consent but what exactly constitutes informed consent is not totally clear.

You may give a general consent – for example, you may tell your doctor to do what he/she considers best. You may give implied consent by not specifically ruling out certain procedures.

Your implied consent may arise out of necessity – for example, if unexpected complications arise during an operation.

If you are seriously ill and not in a position to give or withhold consent, the doctor may carry out what would be considered usual procedures arising from necessity.

Sometimes doctors may consult with your family or nearest relatives but they really have no legal right to give or withhold consent.

Vaccination shots are an essential part of child health care. Though painful, immunization protects children against a variety of diseases. The first vaccine was used a little over a hundred years ago, and vaccination is today well established as a major tool of child health.

Children are susceptible to a large number of dangerous diseases. A generation or two ago in India, when vaccination was not easily available, people were used to losing children to common infectious diseases. Small pox, measles, poliomyelitis — the very rumor of these killer diseases would empty entire villages in fear.

Even today, diseases like measles, tuberculosis, and hepatitis B are major health hazards for our children, in spite of vaccination being available. Diseases like polio, typhoid, and diphtheria, which have been vanquished in the developed countries by good public health, are still common in India, because so few of our children receive the vaccines.

Many of these vaccine preventable diseases are fatal, or leave lifelong disabilities. Medical science still does not have cures for many of them, making vaccination vital for every child. Most of the vaccines in use today are safe and effective,and provide good protection to your child.

Vaccine injections must be given correctly for full benefit. The timing, placement, and injection technique are all crucial to successfully vaccination.

Many doctors and paramedical staff continue to give vaccine injections at sites that have been shown to be associated with poor immune response. Thus the child suffers a painful prick, without the full benefit due. Worse, the family assumes immunity from the disease in question, when in fact the child may be unprotected, because of faulty injection technique.

There are two actually – the shoulder, and the front of the thigh. The old favorite, the buttock, has been abandoned now because of a higher rate of local side effects and poor immune response to vaccination.

The difference is in the fat and muscle layers. Muscles are well supplied with blood vessels, and any drug or vaccine delivered into it is quickly and completely absorbed. Fat, on the other hand, is poorly supplied with blood vessels, and does not contain the cells required to start the immune response to a vaccine.

For best results, the vaccine must be delivered into the muscle. This can be reliably done on the shoulder and thigh, but the thick layer of fat at the buttock makes it difficult. If the vaccine is given into the fat, it is poorly absorbed, and the immunity produced is poor and short lasting. This has been proved for hepatitis B, rabies, and influenza vaccines, and is probably true for other vaccines as well.

Apart from this consideration, the safety factor is important too. The buttock hosts the sciatic nerve, which can be damaged by an injection given here, leading to partial loss of function of that leg. While injections into muscle are safe, injections given into fat often result in abscesses and granulomas. Vaccines containing aluminium salts (such as the DTP vaccine, hepatitis A, and hepatitis B vaccines) frequently cause local irritation, pain, and swelling when accidentally given into fat.