What if my child has asthma?
SUPER [Dr. Michael Gardam
Director of Infection Disease Prevention and Control]
Dr. Michael Gardam: So, if you have children that are asthmatic or have underlying medical conditions, the best thing for you to do is to get your kid vaccinated as quickly has possible. You would be in one of the high risk groups — your child would be in one of the high risk groups and they should go off and get vaccinated.
I think the other thing is, be on the lookout for symptoms in your kid. So if your kid starts to get flu-like symptoms, you should be picking them up and going to a healthcare provider to talk about getting anti-viral drugs. You need to be treated within ideally, 48 hours of the onset of symptoms, so don't wait for days before going in because at that point the drugs don't work very well.
And the other thing is, educating your child on washing their hands frequently — you know, as many times as reasonable for them to do that during the day. Trying to stay away from friends that are clearly ill — trying to make sure that those friends know that they shouldn't be out and about spreading flu everywhere. With young kids, it's really hard to prevent them from spreading — that's kind of what they do in life, right?
So really, what we're talking about is making sure your child gets vaccinated, that your child knows to wash their hands and if they do get sick, that you know to bring them to the physician.
BOARD [For more information visit:
ontario.ca/flu]