Paediatric conference discusses infections

Regardless of the country, infections cause more urgent visits to paediatric healthcare facilities than any other condition of childhood, said Dr Gary R. Fleisher, chief of Boston Children's Hospital, U.S.

Dr Fleisher was delivering a lecture on Infectious Diseases in Paediatric Emergency Medicine, on the second day of the four-day seventh UAE Paediatric Conference which began on April 1 at the Emirates Towers.

Another topic highlighted at the conference was the role of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) as a cause of Acute Lower Respiratory Tract Infections in Children: A Regional and Global Perspective, by Sayenna A Uduman, Associate Professor of Paediatric Infections Diseases, Department of Paediatrics, UAE University.

Also discussed were the Disorders of Sexual Differentiation, by Dr Mehul Dattani, Senior Lecturer, at the Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, London; the Human Genome: A Prospect for Paediatrics by Dr Mark Gardiner from the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Royal Free and University College Medical School, London; the Epidemiological Aspects of Kawasaki Disease in the UAE by Sameer Sajwani, Abdullah Al Khayat and Shahraban Abdulla from Al Wasl Hospital, Dubai.

Dr Fleisher said that children with infections fall into one of three broad categories in terms of apparent severity.

"In the middle, a number of patients have straightforward illnesses of moderate severity, such as pneumonia or cellulites, which require treatment with specific antibiotics as determined by the particular syndrome.

"At the extremes are youngsters with either life threatening infections or those with apparently trivial infections often manifest only by fever. Each of these latter two groups poses distinct challenges for emergency physicians and paediatricians," he said.