One More Death From HFMD

I knew about this even before the baby passed away, and my team already knew that the prognosis was dismal. However I didn't blog here about it in fear of possible unnecessary public outcry! But today the newspaper has published it.

Baby dies of HFM disease, death toll climbs to nine
KUCHING: A 15-month-old boy died of hand foot and mouth disease in the Miri Hospital at 2.30pm Tuesday, raising the death toll from the disease to nine. Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan said the toddler could have been saved if his parents had sent him to the hospital earlier. He said the boy was already in serious condition when he was admitted. A total of 129 new cases were reported Tuesday, bringing the cumulative figure of cases to 7,858.

Another death means the HFMD epidemic in Sarawak will not be declared "over". Hence, my on calls will still be very frequent and very tensed up whenever there is a HFMD case coming in. I could still remember the first case of HFMD death beginning of this year, back in January. I was on call, and was with the poor baby from the minute he was admitted, around 8pm, until I pronounced death (together with other paediatricians) around 9am the following day. I was in ICU the whole time, and I nearly went into hypothermia after so long hours in the 18C ICU climate, furthermore with heavy rain outside!

But it was really heart-breaking seeing these infants succumb to such viral illness, which peaks every 3 years on average. But I must say that I learn a lot from this epidemic this time. The meticulous ways of probing history from parents, careful physical examination, acute emergency management, and indications for IV immunoglobulin and lumbar puncture. Never in this working life that my team and I have performed so many, almost countless lumbar punctures, that now we even "created" a game whenever we perform LP: we bet with each others (even the nurses join in!) that by just looking at the CSF flowing out from the LP needle, we will guess the total cells of this CSF sample! Later when the result's back, we will see who wins! ;)