Iran Press/ Europe: At least 16 children in the UK have died from the invasive Strep A infection and many more are fighting for their lives as the country struggles to contain a rise in cases over the past few weeks.
Parents have been warned to remain vigilant as infections climb.
The UK healthcare system had already been under pressure, but the spike in cases means that it is struggling to cope.
According to Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at the University of East Anglia and the country’s leading public health expert, Strep A is a common bacterium that generally resides in an infected person’s nose and throat without causing any harm, but it is sometimes able to overcome the body's defenses and lead to a more significant illness.
It can cause more serious diseases such as scarlet fever, a bacterial illness that causes a distinctive pink-red rash that generally appears a few days after a sore throat.
Scarlet fever can sometimes lead to rheumatic fever, which damages the heart valves and can also cause kidney problems,” Hunter told Anadolu Agency.
He also pointed out that it can cause invasive streptococcal infections in which “you get one disease's necrotizing fasciitis where it sort of dissolves the muscle, which causes substantial destruction of tissue and ultimately can also cause something called streptococcal toxic shock syndrome, which is serious and has a high fatality rate.”
More severe in children
Hunter reassured that Streptococcus pyogenes is incredibly sensitive to penicillin and if we treat it early enough, we can prevent many of these more severe outcomes.
“But the big problem is diagnosing it early enough when many of the early symptoms look no different to a viral sore throat,” he added.
Strep A tends to spread through respiratory droplets but is also spread by contact with someone’s saliva or nasal discharge.
Hunter explained that we can carry a Strep A infection in the throat for days or weeks without any symptoms, unlike COVID-19, where an infected person gets ill within days.
“We've seen influenza cases, particularly in children rising, and so perhaps it was not that surprising that we were going to see strep infections rising as well,” he said.
Strep A is more severe in children, but it can cause severe disease in people of all ages.
“I've known otherwise fit, healthy adults in their late 20s and early 30s that died from Group A strep infections. So yeah, it's more of a concern in children, but it does cause severe disease in most age groups, all age groups, from time to time certainly,” he added.
Hunter thinks the rise in Strep A infections is due to influenza cases rising in general.
“When you look at the last big wave of scarlet fever, which was in spring 2018, I think, yeah, that followed the biggest wave of influenza that we've seen since 2010,” he said.
Hunter said the country needs to think about whether to give penicillin preventatively to people who have been exposed to the infection in a class or school for instance.
The UK Health Security Agency is currently revising its guidance to doctors and its public health teams, and “how and why do we give penicillin is still an area that is open to debate, whether we just give it to contacts of severe cases, which probably is what will happen, but we'll see what the guidance will be when it's released,” he said.
Medication that treats Strep A hard to get hold of
General practitioners have been told to prescribe antibiotics more freely, but parents and pharmacists have said they have faced difficulties getting them due to shortages driven by complicated supply chains for medications and the fact that the raw materials used to make them are made in many different countries.
“It doesn't necessarily mean there's a shortage, it just means also it's hard to actually get us supply” and “I have spoken to actually our wholesaler and they have told us there is no shortage, but they are having more operational issues,” Nishma Hirani, a pharmacist at Warwick Pharmacy, told Anadolu Agency.
“But as being the end product, if that's not communicated to us, we will feel there's a shortage because we can't supply the patient, which does cause people to get a bit panicky, especially when there's an outbreak,” said Hirani.
“There is a divide when people say there isn't a shortage but we're on the end of it and we can't receive the product. So that's not being communicated properly,” she added.
According to the pharmacist, there is a bit more availability of tablets than liquid, and pharmacists are being encouraged to show parents how to use them.
“So, we are trying to not leave any child without medicine,” she said.
The cost of antibiotics needed to treat Strep A has skyrocketed as industry experts claim prices have increased to take advantage of the huge demand.
Sky News reported that one pharmaceutical industry leader anonymously told the network that for instance, the cost of the antibiotic Amoxicillin has risen from £0.8 to £18 ($0.98-$22).
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