Rotavirus infection is a common diarrheal disease among infants and children, and serious cases can cause acute gastroenteritis, severe dehydration and even death, doctors said yesterday as they urged parents to be alert to the symptoms.
Lu Chun-yi (呂俊毅), a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at National Taiwan University Hospital, cited the case of a 14-month-old infant with severe diarrhea and vomiting who was brought to hospital the day after developing fever and cramps.
On the third day, the infant suffered from rapid heartbeat, poor blood circulation, shortness of breath and low blood pressure, but was revived with endotracheal intubation and a cardiac stimulant, Lu said.
The infant was found to have contracted rotavirus, which caused his white blood cell count to rapidly increase to more than 50,000 leukocytes, Lu said.
He had severe dehydration, liver dysfunction, kidney failure and metabolic acidosis, Lu said.
Although such severe cases are not common, parents should be alert because the symptoms can progress rapidly after only about two days of incubation, Lu said.
Infants aged six to 24 months are at the greatest risk of developing severe complications from the infection, he said.
Huang Li-min (黃立民), director of the hospital’s pediatrics department, said diarrheal disease is the second-leading cause of death in children under five.
In 2015, 29.3 percent of child deaths under five years old from diarrhea were due to rotavirus infection, Huang said.
“Rotavirus infection can occur in any season, and infants are at risk of infection from birth. Nearly all children have been infected at least once before the age of five,” he said.
While many children recovered by themselves, about 30 percent were hospitalized for treatment, Huang added.
He said the predominant genotypes of rotaviruses in Taiwan are G3 and G8, but G12 has been detected in many parts of the world, including European countries and the US, and could spread to Taiwan in the coming years.
Lu said rotavirus is transmitted via the fecal-oral route, and studies showed that improving environmental hygiene has limited effect on preventing the virus, as a small number of rotaviruses are capable of causing illness.
There is no specific medicine to treat rotavirus infection, so doctors can only prescribe medicines to treat symptoms, Lu said.
“Rotavirus infection is a common disease in infants and children, but should not be neglected because some cases can become critical,” he said, adding that while more scientific evidence is needed to understand whether probiotics can protect against rotaviruses, oral vaccines — which are notcovered by the National Health Insurance — are considered a relatively effective method of prevention.
Centers for Disease Control Deputy Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said only Taipei and Hsinchu County’s Jhubei City provide a subsidy for the oral vaccine against rotavirus infection, and infants are advised to complete a two-dose or three dose course of oral vaccines before six months of age.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater