My child has a fever. What should I do?
A fever is a normal reaction of the body in order to fight off a type of infection. The first thing we need to know is that it's a normal type of response. The problem with a fever is that if it goes too high, it can create a number of problems In particular, it can cause hallucinations and especially convulsions. These are known as febrile convulsions and can be potentially serious. The way to approach a fever is to try to assess what degree of fever a child has. In centigrade, we normally consider a normal temperature to be 37 degrees. If a child is running a temperature of 38-39, it's not too worrying, but the child may feel uncomfortable as a result and hence it would be useful to give them something to bring the temperature down. However, if the fever is running at 40 degrees or above, I think you have come to an area of risk of a febrile convulsion. That means that the fever must be brought down. In addition to the medication, which is usually acetaminophen based or ibuprofen based, there are a number of things we can do to help the child along. Don't put too many blankets over the child, have one layer of clothing and usually just one blanket. Make sure the child is not cold but certainly avoid them from being hot, because that will just push the fever up even further. Secondly, you can wash the child down with water - with tepid water or cool water, never cold water, never alcohol; just cool water to aid the body to lose temperature. The third thing you can do is to have a bit of a draft or a fan over the child, again to help remove some heat from the surface area of the body. Those are very simple but can be extremely effective measures at getting that temperature to come down during a fever.
