Scarlet fever

Sorry, wrong thread. Have asked GNHQ to delete.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

A little five-year-old girl I knew well - she would have been my GD's big sister - died almost 24 years ago of meningococcal septicaemia. A traumatic event for everyone, but especially her pregnant mother and her little brother. I hope many families will now be spared this agony with the introduction of vaccines for infants.

I looked it up and my GD was vaccinated against Type C meningitis.

I discovered that I had been ill with bacterial type B which is the really serious one. Can't believe how lucky I was to escape relatively unharmed. I was a more nervy child after the illness but apart from that was unscathed.

There is Scarlet Fever doing the rounds here too.

Apparently it is difficult to diagnose because other strep throats can also result in a rash. Perhaps that is why it appeared to have disappeared and has now come back.

Falconbird I think the Meningitis B vaccine will be available for babies, but I'm not sure about older children yet.
So glad you weren't left with the terrible side effects; a baby living near us had it (I think she was on the main news as well as our local news). She was left with life-changing consequences and her parents have been campaigning for this vaccine to be made available.

Drugs companies make a lot of money on many drugs so I would have thought they could have come to an agreement much sooner on a reasonable price for the vaccine especially when it affects babies and children in particular.

I saw on TV that a vaccine for Meningitis B would soon be available. Bit confused because I took my little GD for a meningitis vaccine when she was quite small - maybe it was a different strain of meningitis.

I had meningitis when I was 11 and was undamaged but it can do so much terrible harm to a child.

Anyone clued up about this vaccine?

It's a shame our poor grandchildren have to go through it with the chance of catching it again, but I'd rather them have to endure a couple of round that antibiotics than go through what I went through when I was younger.
I looked over on www.patient.co.uk/health/scarlet-fever-leaflet to find out some of the symptoms of <a href="www.patient.co.uk/health/scarlet-fever-leaflet"> scarlet fever</a> and it was really helpful.

Scarletina is just the medical name for scarlet fever in the same way as Rubella is German measles. A few people use it to describe the milder form of the disease but in fact all cases are scarletina.

I remember people using that term in the 50s Falconbird.
I have a few theories, and they are only theories:
1. GPs are trying hard not to give antibiotics for sore throats and saying things like "come back in 7 days if it is not better". Most Sts are viral but SF starts with a bacterial (strep) throat.
2. In some areas of the country GP services are under such pressure that parents may be having difficulty getting an appointment. Throat then gets worse and becomes SF.
3. Poverty. Other bacterial diseases, notably TB were steadily declining in the years before antibiotics were discovered. There is a correlation between TB and overcrowded, impoverished living conditions. There may be an increase in families living in overcrowded conditions (changes to housing benefit) and a increase in families who don't have enough to eat (food banks...) that is behind this increase.
In NZ the incidence of rheumatic fever (that nasty complication of SF, which affects the heart) is higher in poorer communities particularly Maori or Pacific Islanders who tend to have worse health outcomes than white NZ-ers on many measures AND more poverty and overcrowding. Life expectancy of these groups 10 years less than white.
I just guessed that the same picture might be found in Australia and blow me down, I was right. (indigenous ethnic groups 20 yrs less life expectancy...)
www.rhdaustralia.org.au/about-arf-rhd/epidemiology

I could be wrong here, but I think it might called Scarletina now - a sort of weakened version of the original awful disease.

Anyone know?

There are several cases of Scarlet Fever locally.
I'm really confused as to why it's recently resurfaced - I don't recall hearing about it amongst my peers when I was young.

Scientists have been aware of this issue of increasing bug resistance to antibiotics for a long time Nellie It is a very scary prospect that we may face a future where people die from simple infections again.

There was a very alarming programme on Radio 4 yesterday about how so many bugs are becoming resistant to antibiotics.

Interesting - so many families scarred by these infectious diseases.

My father was in an isolation hospital for six weeks with scarlet fever. This was in the 20's when he was about six.

My mother in law told me that her mother had rheumatic fever when she ŵas born so she was raised by an aunt for several months. It probably explains some of her odd ways.

That's so sad Teetime, very similar to my mother's birth, but in her case she never really had a mother because her mum was in and out of the TB sanatorium until she died just before my mum's 6th birthday.
After that her father put her in a children's home for a year and when she eventually returned home the 'wicked stepmother' had moved in and that was the end of her childhood. It makes me want to cry recalling it....

Oh Teetime

I was born in an isolation hospital as my mother had TB whilst pregnant with me. It was the early days of streptomycin so she had to stay to have the treatment and I was taken away at birth and not given back until I was 6 months old - no wonder she couldn't stand me.

Sorry Jess I thought you'd committed that heinous crime of not reading all my posts carefully and thoroughly

For some unknown reason I slipped through the net for the smallpox vaccine. When I was 16 and going to work in a hospital I had to have it and boy was I ill.
Never heard the word pobbs used in the north east, and certainly would not have eaten it had it been offered to me.

I had polio when I was about 3, when we lived in North Wales. Luckily it was not severe because, by the time the medics had decided (a week later) that was what it was and I should really be in hospital, I was sitting up in bed feeling a bit better. That was a real relief for my mother as she had just had twins and she and my father owned a hotel about 20 miles away from the nearest hospital.

Our pobbs were eaten in east Lancashire, one of the bits that is now called Gtr Manchester.

On the subject of inoculations I share the concern expressed by others about parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated. Diptherea, measles, whooping cough, polio all illnesses that could kill or maim. Some parents don't keep appointments for immunisations, others oppose them because they fear side effects. Crazy!

I lived in Manchester when I had 'pobbs', so not regional.

'Pobbs' - I remember that as an alternative name for bread and milk, hot and sweet... We lived in North London - don't know if that gives a clue to whether or no the name was regional.

On the subject of vaccines - thank heavens for Doctor Salk. There was a programme about him on TV. It showed the way he persisted with trials for a Polio vaccine and successfully developed one. Because of his stoic work, polio has now been eradicated on this planet.

I remember polio too well. In fact when I had meningitus the doctors thought at first that it was Polio. I was in a fever hospital and that was in 1958. I had 14 lumber punctures which were awful to make sure the infection had gone.

I can't understand parents who are against vaccines. In fact my own father was but mum made sure I had all the post war inoculations. When it came to the sugar lump vaccine for polio (1962?) dad protested again. He had the crazy idea that the first polio injection given in 1957 had caused me to have meningitis.

I was a teenager by then and mum was so fed up with him that I remember her shouting - the girl is old enough now to make her own mind up. I lined up with all the others and had the polio vaccine and the one for TB.

I do remember a family in my area having Scarlet Fever and they were terribly ill. I remember them leaning out of the window of their house and screaming and crying.