Tag: malaria

Baby mosquito bite hacks

On By jocairdwp2 Comments

Mosquito and other insect bites are no fun at any age but particularly galling when the person who’s been bitten is too young to understand that scratching will only make the discomfort worse. When you take into account the fact that mosquitos in some parts of the world can carry dangerous diseases like malaria, zika and dengue fever, it’s important to get informed and organised ahead of time to stop your baby getting munched.

How to stop your child being bitten by mosquitos

A woman and her baby sit in a chair at a beach restaurant in Goa, India © Steve Pretty
The mosquitos only came out at dusk in Goa, so we didn’t need to cover up or use repellent in the daytime. At night we used repellent and the baby girl slept in her pop-up tent travel cot, which has integrated mosquito nets. © Steve Pretty

Mosquitos lay their eggs in standing water, so avoid hanging out by lakes or ponds, or even puddles after a storm. If your accommodation is on the budget end of the scale it’s worth doing some additional research as to its surroundings – when we took the baby girl to Goa when she was four months old I very nearly booked us into a place where the mossies would have us eaten us alive. It was only by doing some digging that I discovered the proximity of the huts to what the management called a stream but was in effect a swamp. Mosquitos and other flying insects don’t like altitude, so they shouldn’t be an issue in any destination over 2,000m up.

There are thousands of species of mosquitos, with some active during the day, some at night, some at dawn, etc, etc, but it’s fair to say that you’re most likely to get bitten at dusk. Keeping your little one covered up is the most effective way of stopping her from being munched: loose-fitting, full-length sleeves and trousers, the thicker the material the better, as the little bastards can bite through thin, tightly fitting fabric.

You can buy mosquito nets to fit around most cots – and prams and pushchairs for when you want to be and about – but more convenient is an integrated product like the NSA UK pop-up tent/travel cot. Nets treated with insecticide are more effective than those without.

Covering up isn’t necessarily the most attractive option in hot destinations, and you can’t keep a child under a mosquito net 24/7 – which is where insect repellent comes in. DEET-based products are recommended by the National Health Service for everyone over the age of 2 months – concentrations of between 20% and 30% are best for children (the higher the concentration, the longer your little one is protected). While safe for use, DEET is a strong chemical and shouldn’t be breathed in or applied near the mouth or eyes. If you can be very confident that there are no mosquitos where your baby is sleeping, it’s a good idea to wash the repellent off before bed.

Contrary to popular belief, citronella and tea tree oil have little to no repellent properties, so don’t rely on them if you don’t want to get bitten.

Treatment of bites

Baby on holiday in a pop-up tent travel cot on a beach in Goa, with the sun setting over the sea. A mini fan is keeping the baby cool. There are sun loungers on the beach.
The baby girl in her pop-up tent travel cot on the beach in Goa

Cold compresses can help to calm itching from bites, and you should trim your little one’s nails to limit the damage done by scratching. If your baby is in real discomfort, you can give her infant paracetamol. For very severe reactions to bites, a doctor or pharmacist will be able to offer advice or prescribe something to calm the symptoms (most over-the-counter insect bite relief creams are not recommended for children under the age of three).

Malaria

Malaria is even more dangerous in babies and young children than it in adults so it’s important that you take steps to avoid it. That means everything already covered in this post, but it might also mean antimalarial medication, depending on your destination, the age and weight of your child (not all medications are suitable for young children), and what you’ll be getting up to on your trip. Make an appointment with your GP or practice nurse six to eight weeks before you travel to discuss your options.

 

Travel vaccinations for babies and toddlers

On By jocairdwp

The good news is that the standard vaccinations your baby will receive at the age of two months, three months, four months and 12 months will protect her from a lot of the diseases you might come across when travelling. That said, there are of course plenty of further flung destinations for which additional travel vaccinations are recommended. The advice for older children, as for adults, is to make an appointment with your GP or practice nurse six to eight weeks before departure to ensure that everyone is up-to-date with travel vaccinations, but for babies and toddlers it’s worth having that conversation before you book the trip as some vaccines can only be given above a certain age.

Here are a few common travel vaccines and antimalarials, along with their lower age limits (helpfully provided by a doctor friend – thanks Anna!), that I hope might be helpful for the purposes of advance trip planning. For example, if hepatitis A is a major risk in a destination you’re considering visiting, but your baby is less than a year old, you might want to postpone that particular trip until she’s old enough to be vaccinated for hepatitis A. It’s important to stress here that I’m not a medical professional so this information is for guidance only.

A baby receives a vaccination
“Vaccine Reaction, Double Exposure” by Teddy Kwok is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Travel vaccines:

Hepatitis A – from 12-months-old
Typhoid – from 24-months-old
Yellow fever – from six-months-old; given between the ages of six and nine months only during major outbreaks
Japanese encephalitis – from two-months-old
Combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) –from nine-months-old

Antimalarial medications:

Malarone – not recommended for children weighing less than 11kg
Doxycycline – not recommended for children
Mefloquine (Lariam) – not recommended for children weighing less than 5kg

Travelling without vaccinations

A baby receives a vaccination
“P1030972” by Daniel Hatton is licensed under CC BY 2.0

If you want to travel with your baby before she’s received the standard NHS vaccinations, it’s a matter of weighing up the risks of the trip against its benefits. When planning our first proper adventure with the baby girl – to the northern Spanish city of Santiago di Compostela when she was six-weeks-old – we reasoned that although she would not have been immunised by the time of the trip, she was at no higher risk of infection in Santiago than she was in London. By the time of our next adventure – 10 days in Goa a few months later – we had to do that risk/benefit calculation again as we considered the dangers of taking the baby girl away before she had received the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Again, we decided that the destination didn’t present very much of an increased risk, so away we went.

In the case of trips to destinations where a particular disease is a risk but a vaccine isn’t available, talk to your doctor or nurse about preventative measures. This might mean only drinking and brushing your teeth with bottled water, for example, or protecting against mosquito bites with the help of repellents and nets. I’ll be covering how to deal with mosquitos in an separate post – sign up for the mailing list so you don’t miss it.