Nursery & conjunctivitis

[fermerswife]

Evening everyone.

My 19 month has been in nursery (daycare) for the last 10 months and has conjunctivitis around 4-5 times already. I know it's common in a nursery setting but it just seems never ending... When a child has gunky eyes the rule is they must stay away till 24 hours after they've started treatment but less face it by then the germs have already been well spread.

Anyway as many of you probably know this is a right pain in the bum from a childcare point of view. Especially as he's right as rain apart from these eyes and I can't afford to take all this time off work or afford £38 a day to have him at home so each time he's had drops. This time though the infection doesn't seem to be clearing after completing 4/5 days of treatment. Does anyone have any advice about how to get this cleared up by Monday as I can't take any more time off work.

Childcare is such a pain.

Should have said this is 4-5 bouts of conjunctivitis never mind all the other endless illnesses.

DD has been in Childcare almost three years now, since I returned from mat leave and never had conjunctivitis. Are you sure that it's not a child never fully getting rid or something?

Ps. I absolutely feel your pain!

It's a shame that the nursery has that as a policy. Conjunctivitis very rarely needs antibiotic treatment and it's one of the illnesses that we're going to have a problem with because of people routinely treating it with antibiotics. GPs and pharmacists hand antibiotics out quite routinely despite guidelines from the NHS clearly stating that it should only be used rarely in cases where it has not cleared in a fortnight or where unusual or severe symptoms are present. Couple that with guidelines at nurseries where they expect treatment and antibiotic resistance for conjunctivitis is going to becoming guaranteed.

Sorry, that's all an aside to your particular situation.

If you have a case of conjunctivitis that hasn't self cleared in 2 weeks despite keeping clean, bathing, isolating towels to prevent reinfection etc then you need to see a GP to find out what is going on.

With so much conjunctivitis, have you ruled out it being something else? Or instead of infective conjunctivitis, it might be allergic conjunctivitis and caused by an allergy. Most commonly I think it's dust mites and the treatment for this is different to infective conjunctivitis as it requires antihistamine, not antibiotic.

Thallula and showy thanks for your replies. If there's still gunk on Monday I'm going to take him to get them swabbed.

I completely agree showy 100%. I know that if nursery didn't have this policy I wouldn't be automatically giving drops but I just simply can't keep him out of nursery for over a week waiting for it to clear. It is so annoying too as sure if their eyes get gunky while they are there the germs have already been spread it's just too late. I completely understand and agree with exclusion for v&d or chicken pox etc. Those are illnesses that make babies ill and not fit for nursery while they're under the weather. Mild conjunctivitis in our experience anyway if just a bit of an inconvenience.

Oh I completely understand. You need the childcare and they have put these rules in place.

Perhaps you could talk to the nursery about their policies. Public health advice for diarrhoea and vomiting and for chicken pox informs policies for childcare settings and I absolutely expect it to be adhered to. The public health advice for conjunctivitis is to carry on as normal:

"Public Health England advises that you do not need to stay away from work or school if you or your child has conjunctivitis, unless you are feeling particularly unwell". Maybe you could ask them to review it given that it's not in line with anything official and it doesn't work anyway!

Thanks showy that's really helpful - our PCT sets their policy apparently...

No exclusion period recommended by NHS Scotland either:

www.documents.hps.scot.nhs.uk/hai/infection-control/guidelines/exclusion-criteria-childcare-A3-2011-12.pdf

My DC 1 had it. GP and nursery recommended fringe / shorter hair. Never Hadith since

Thanks all, I've printed that out so will speak to manager of nursery on Monday in the hope they'll take note and update their policy or it might be time to look at other option. And if eyes don't improve I will get a swab done as he's getting it so often. You're all great xx

I should have added ours was at the crawling stage when hair got dirty then into eyes ..