Conjunctivitis - School have conradicted doctor's advice.

[perpetualworrier]

DS2 was sent home from school today with suspected conjunctivitis. Doctor has confirmed and prescribed usual antibiotic drops.

When I collected him from school, the secretary told me he must not return to school for 2 days after treatment starts. The doctor said this is unnecessary. He said before we had the benefit of antibiotics, it was true, as to could go right through the school and was very difficult to clear. However, he says the drops render it practically non-contagious from the first dose, so highly unlikely to be passed on and if it is, it's only a minor irritation these days, rather than the horror it was in the past.

Do I tell the secretary her advice is out of date (and prepare for a battle), or let DS2 miss 2 days of school unnecessarily?

thing is it is very hard to get thr drops into some children's eyes
and lots of parents don't like to give too mnay antibiotics
it is often a symptom of other congestion to so a couple of days at home might give your ds a rest?

if it school policy then they will just send him home again. would be worth getting it in writing to get policy changed though

Most cases of conjunctivitis are viral anyway so antibiotics do bugger all a lot of the time as it is.

I've had the same fight with nursery. It's really annoying.

Message withdrawn

If you look on the health protection agency website (I think www.hpa.org.uk) there is a table of when children need to be kept off school and for how long. Conjuctivitis is on the list and clearly says you do not have to keep them off school.

The hpa is a government body so it's advice should be followed!

It is out of date, but so is your GP for prescribing antibiotics. Virtually all conjunctivitis is viral and self-limiting. I have a friend who's a GP who's struggling with her kids' nursery about this, but they aren't budging.

this is their advice sheet for conjuctivitis and this is the table of exclusion periods for all infectious diseases that they recommend

It's not the best web-site to navigate your way around!

Our school doesn't send them home. Teachers have to go in with it too.

Thing is, conjunctivitis can be really, really nasty. I know the official advice has changed, but I went through several doses of conjunctivitis with ds when he was a baby and it was dreadful. He was very distressed. On one occasion, it came on while we were at a friends house - suddenly noticed his eyes were sticky and then mucus being literally dripping down his eyes so fast wiping them was frankly useless and just upsetting him.

And it's very contagious. I realise not everyone has it that badly, but personally I'd keep a child off to limit the chances of it spreading. Would hate to cause another child to go through the sheer misery ds experienced.

if I sent the dcs into nursery I would feel bad for the staff having to wipe his eyes all the time, bad for the other children who might get it, and the staff too. It's not a nice thing to have as Edam says...

Yes I get that posie, but TBH I haven't wiped his eye all afternoon. It's a bit red and sore looking, but it isn't troubling him and there is very little discharge. And if what Doc says about the time it takes for drops to work is right (seems perhaps questionable from above) by tommorrow, it should be even better.

DS's nursery doesn't let them in for two days after starting antibiotics in case they have a bad reaction to the antibiotics, rather than because they are concerned about its still being contagious. Same applies to any antibiotics for anything.

yes but portandLemon many gps don't prescribe antib's for conjunctivitis any more

OP's DS is on antibiotic drops, though. Just pointing out that it's not necessarily fear of contagion that drives a 2-day exclusion policy.