Don’t let rainy days get you down • PhilSTAR Life

The rainy season can often bring back lonely memories of the past or shift your mood from happiness to sadness. Yetfor many, especially children, it also brings a lot of fun. Kids love playing in the rain, bathing under the downpour, running through green fields, and enjoying the cool, refreshing climate that comes with it.

However, the rainy season also brings an increased risk of various health issues. Fortunately, dealing with common illnesses during this time isn’t too difficult if you’re aware of some quick remedies. Parents, in particular, need to be extra cautious to prevent their young children from catching these seasonal diseases.

While the wet season offers fun and excitement, it also comes with a rise in infections that are prevalent during this time. It’s important to stay informed about these risks and take necessary precautions to stay healthy. The most common illnesses during the rainy season affect the respiratory system and include waterborne and foodborne diseases.

Colds and flu are among the most frequent illnesses during the rainy season, usually caused by sudden temperature fluctuations. Whether you’re a student, a working professional, or a homemaker, it’s essential to protect yourself and avoid getting sick.

Don't let a simple sneeze turn into something more. Stay vigilant and take care this rainy season.

When the rain begins to pour, most people instinctively look for shelter to avoid getting drenched. While shelter may keep you dry, it doesn’t always protect you from infections—especially if your immune system is weak.

Dengue is one of the top 10 global health threats that tends to increase during the rainy season. It is the fastest-bb2spreading vector-borne disease with four serotypes. Each serotype provides specific lifetime immunity, and a short-term cross immunity. That is, when you are infected with one, you can get infected again with another serotype after some time, which is usually more severe than your first infection as all serotypes can cause severe and fatal disease.

Mosquitoes are out! Always use insect repellent, especially during daytime, to protect against dengue. Your family's health matters.

Dengue is now endemic in 100 countries. In the past 50 years there has been a 30-fold increase in global incidence. It is more common among the five to nine age group (23 percent) with deaths occurring at 38 percent. The majority of the infected are males (56 percent) but a majority of dengue deaths occur in females at 54 percent. About half of the world’s population is now at risk of dengue with an estimated 100-400 million infections occurring each year.

Most people with dengue have mild or no symptoms and will get better in two to seven days. Severe dengue symptoms often come after the fever has gone away.

Parents need to be extra cautious to prevent their young children from catching seasonal diseases like dengue.

The various serotypes of dengue virus are transmitted to humans through the bites of the female Aedes aegypti mosquito and usually these mosquitoes bite during daytime. Dengue virus circulating in the blood of a human is ingested by the female mosquito during feeding, which infects the mid gut of the insect and subsequently spreads systemically over a period of eight to 12 days, and thus can be transmitted to other humans during subsequent probing or feeding to another person. Thereafter, the mosquito remains infective for the rest of its life, that is why it has to be killed. In other countries, they found out that mosquitoes infected by the bacteria Wolbachia cannot be infected by dengue, so they grow mosquitoes with such infection to decrease the population of dengue-infected mosquitoes, preventing its further spread. But there are other ways of preventing dengue infections—the "Four Ss” of dengue prevention, as follows:

Search and destroy. Mosquitoes thrive in clean and stagnant water which increases during the rainy season. So, if you have these places around your house, you should remove them. Bottles filled with rainwater should be discarded; craters or pots filled with rainwater should be covered with soil; drums should be covered; other areas like the kitchen should be clean, with containers filled with clean water.
Self-protection measures. Vaccination is very important. Wear comfortable clothing that can protect from mosquitoes, like pajamas with long sleeves, socks. You may use an insect repellant. Put plants around your doors and windows to drive away mosquitoes, such as lemongrass, sage, basil, lemon balm, catnip, marigold, citronella, pennyroyal, garlic, eucalyptus, neem tree, lavender, mint etc. Use mosquito nets or put screens in your home.
Seek early consultation if with fever for two days with red flat rashes all over the body or bleeding on the skin.
Say yes to fogging during an outbreak. In other countries, if two patients got infected in a certain community, they start fogging the area immediately.

Children are among the most susceptible to severe illnesses, including dengue, during the rainy season.

If a patient starts showing warning signs like the following, then they should be admitted and treated in a hospital setting:

Intense continuous abdominal pain or pain when palpating (pressure applied to abdomen to check the presence of organ enlargement or presence of fluid accumulation over the same area)
Persistent vomiting (three episodes in one hour or four in six hours)
Fluid accumulation in the lungs (pleural effusion), heart (pericardial effusion), or abdomen (ascites)
Mucosal bleeding (gums, nose, vagina, kidney)
Altered mental status
Hepatomegaly or liver enlargement (> or = 2 cm below costal margin).

Children, pregnant women, those with acute renal failure, coagulopathy (problem with clotting of blood), lung problem, those who can’t tolerate oral fluids, and the elderly are the most susceptible population and should be given priority at all times.