After Measles: Don't Neglect

The article was professionally consulted with Specialist Doctor II Huynh Thi Diem Thuy - Vaccine Consultant - Pediatrics - Neonatology Department, Vinmec Central Park International General Hospital.

Many parents see that their children have recovered from measles, but they have a subjective mentality. In the post-measles period, children still need to be closely monitored by parents, especially children under 2 years old with measles.

Parents need to pay attention to the complications of measles in children, especially post-measles disease (when the child gets sick 1-2 weeks after the measles is completely cured) severe changes, which can lead to death.
Measles during the epidemic season spreads widely, many children are hospitalized, leading to the risk of cross-infection in the hospital, making it possible for pediatric patients to be treated at the same time with measles and other diseases. At that time, if the number of diseases is high, the number of severe cases will also increase, with about 10% of the total measles cases being severe cases, falling into complicated measles. In some cases, complications became severe pneumonia, requiring mechanical ventilation. Post-measles pneumonia occurs when the measles is gone for 1-2 weeks, the child begins to develop pneumonia, severe cases may not survive.
Besides the children receiving treatment for measles remission, the cases of re-hospitalization because of measles also account for a significant proportion, because although the child has recovered from the disease, but from 7 to 10 days later, the child's body is still quite weak. The resistance has not really recovered, so the possibility of infection increases.
In many cases, parents see that their children have recovered from the disease, but they have a subjective mentality, do not pay attention to protecting the health of their children after measles, which is inadvertently a condition for other diseases to enter.
Therefore, when your child has measles and even after recovering from the disease, parents still need to take care of the child carefully. Depending on the location of each child, it takes 1-3 months after recovering from the disease, both the immune system and the child's health can fully recover as before.

Measles complications in young children, especially those under 2 years old, are often pneumonia, malnutrition. In older children and adults, measles complications can include myocarditis and encephalitis. Most of the children admitted to the hospital were associated with pneumonia, there are cases of children who have just had a rash and have pneumonia right away, and there are children who have stopped the rash and then have pneumonia.
Measles running behind often causes serious complications partly because of parental neglect. Many parents almost only pay attention to protecting their children when there are signs of illness, have a measles rash, and when the child has finished measles, they are neglected. Meanwhile, in this post-measles period, children's resistance is still weak, they are very susceptible to infections and develop severe respiratory diseases, especially children under 9 months of age who have underlying medical conditions. chronic diseases such as heart disease, asthma, malnutrition.
Especially for measles, the most dangerous are often post-measles complications. Accordingly, the common complications after measles include: Pneumonia, diarrhea, infection, encephalitis, corneal dryness and ulceration, easily leading to blindness. However, most children with measles only develop pneumonia complications.
Thereby, doctors recommend that, when children have just recovered from measles, parents should still take care of their children carefully, increase eating and supplementing with adequate nutrition.

Diet for children after measles is very important. Parents need to pay attention to children drinking lots of water, especially in hot weather, supplementing with fruit and juice to enhance vitamin C, to improve resistance.
Satisfy nutritional needs, diversify foods (provide 4 food groups: protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals). Food should be liquid, soft, easy to add. Enhance essential vitamins and minerals in the form of syrup, nuggets, oral tablets... containing vitamins A, E, C, zinc, selenium..., the most important of which can be mentioned is vitamin A, vitamin C and zinc, as these help improve immune system health.
If the child is still breastfeeding, should continue to breastfeed more often, combined with a scientific and reasonable diet. The daily diet should be full of protein-rich foods, such as meat, fish (fish such as carp, fruit fish, basa, cobia, salmon, herring...), eggs, milk or seafood. In case children have complications with measles and have diarrhea or pneumonia, it is necessary to actively supplement zinc orally according to the instructions of the treating doctor.
For vegetables, it is necessary to choose yellow, red (such as carrot, tomato, pumpkin, orange, mango, papaya, watermelon...) and dark green leafy vegetables ( such as water spinach, sweet potato, red amaranth, spinach, broccoli...) because it contains many vitamins and minerals, especially vitamin A, vitamin C... helps strengthen immunity, fight against disease. infection and promote healing of injuries in the body, especially eye damage. Fruits rich in vitamin C such as grapefruit, apple, pear... are also very good for the resistance.

When a child has measles, parents should not use hot spices (such as chili, pepper, garlic, curry, cinnamon, onion), limit foods high in saturated fat, viscera and fat animal. Absolutely need to avoid foods that are easy to cause allergies, strange foods, dirty foods, easy to cause poisoning. In addition, give children enough water to drink, especially during the period of fever, vomiting and dehydration. The type of water used can be fruit juice such as orange, grapefruit, lemon juice... After recovering from illness, children need to eat more, for at least 2 weeks, to quickly return to health. Optimal.
With post-measles cases, families need to closely monitor their children, when they have symptoms of cough, fever, difficulty breathing, it is necessary to take the child for re-examination to promptly detect and handle measles complications.