Kids still need health care
Avoiding needed care can have serious consequences
Ihave heard stories from pediatricians across the state about parents who have delayed getting needed care for their child because of misinformation or fear. For example, there was the parent of a 10-year-old with asthma who didn’t call the pediatrician when he started wheezing because she thought the office wasn’t open. Another parent didn’t bring her child for her 12-month well visit and shots because of fears of exposure to COVID-19 at the office.
So I’m writing with a critical public health announcement: Pediatricians and child health providers are available now as always to provide care for children and families. Kids still need health care, especially during this COVID-19 crisis. Delaying or avoiding needed care can lead to serious adverse health consequences.
If you are a parent or caregiver of a child, here are some important things to know about getting the safest health care for your child:
Doctor’s offices are taking numerous precautions to maintain social distancing and protect patients and families from COVID19 exposure while meeting child health needs. They are offering a variety of virtual care (non-face-to-face care) visit types, using the telephone, internet and video calls. For in-person care, practices have taken preventive measures such as screening staff and patients at entry, requiring masks be worn by those entering the office, separating times of day or even separate offices for sick and well visits, eliminating waiting rooms and instead escorting patients directly from the office entry to an exam room.
The stories of delaying or avoiding care make me afraid — afraid for the child with fever and cough who doesn’t get diagnosed or treated for an ailment until needing emergency hospitalization; concerned for the parents who are feeling overwhelmed trying to juggle working from home and supervising their children’s education or the parents who are out of work and struggling to feed their children and supervise their education; and I’m afraid for the child not seen by anyone outside the home and suffering maltreatment.
Plus, there are the everyday issues that challenge most if not all parents, particularly during a stay-athome order. How best to effectively manage screen time for kids stuck at home? How to maintain a regular bedtime routine? What about the child with anxiety or the teen who becomes withdrawn or depressed to the point of contemplating suicide during the uncertainty and isolation of these times?
The most significant impact of delayed or avoided care may be missed immunizations, which could lead to a resurgence of preventable infectious diseases. Recent outbreaks of measles and whooping cough right here in Pennsylvania remind us of the need for vigilance in maintaining childhood immunization rates. While there is not yet a vaccine to protect us from COVID-19 (and we are experiencing what life is like without this one vaccine), we are fortunate to have effective vaccines against a host of severe and potentially fatal infections such as polio, diphtheria, pertussis, measles and influenza, to name a few. We have the power to prevent these diseases. Let’s use it.
Pediatricians are there for you, so don’t hesitate to call your child’s doctor. Stay connected. These are unprecedented times and we need each other.