Between January and March of this year, the state of São Paulo recorded 391 cases of the hand-foot-and-mouth disease. This represented an increase of 149% compared to the first three months of last year.
According to the State Department of Health of São Paulo, the number of cases of the disease in 2023 is already greater than that recorded in the entire year of 2022, when there were 385 notifications. And it should grow even more, as the disease tends to have greater transmission during the fall.
Hand-foot-and-mouth disease is a contagious disease caused by a virus and is seasonal. It is more frequent in children up to five years old, whose transmission occurs through airway secretions, saliva droplets, fecal-oral route and contact with lesions.
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To avoid the disease, basic hygiene measures are necessary, such as washing your hands well and avoiding crowds. It is also necessary not to share objects and clean items for personal use and the environment with a 70% ethyl alcohol solution or chlorine solution. The secretariat advises parents to keep sick children at home, preventing them from attending day care for about seven days or until the skin lesions have disappeared.
Virus
There is no treatment for the disease. The use of analgesics, antipyretics and hydration can help with recovery. According to the secretary, the recovery can last between seven and ten days.
The virus that causes the disease inhabits the digestive system and can cause stomatitis, a kind of canker sore. Symptoms are associated with high fever in the first few days and then small blisters on the hands and soles of the feet, in addition to red spots in the mouth, tonsils and pharynx. Other symptoms are: vomiting and diarrhea, as well as difficulty swallowing and a lot of salivation.
“Usually, as with other viral infections, the disease spontaneously regresses after a few days. There is no vaccine against this disease, so in most cases only the symptoms are treated,” explained Helmar Abreu Rocha Verlangieri, a child infectologist at Hospital Darcy Vargas, in a statement.
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