The spread in India of a disease in children known as tomato feverdue to the red and painful blisters, led this Friday to the most populous state in the country to issue a alert. Qualified as a “new virus” in a article published last week in the medical journal The Lancetthe first case was detected in the southern state of Kerala on May 6.
“Hand, foot and mouth disease is not unusual in South India and (Tomato Fever) is closely related to it. Currently the clinical analysis is that it is a variant,” said the public health expert and former director of the National Health System Resource Center (NHSRC) T. Sundararaman.
According to the authors of the study published in The Lancet, tomato fever mainly affects children under five years of age. They have been identified at least 82 cases in Kerala, in addition to 26 in the eastern state of Odisha.
Symptoms of Tomato Fever
Symptoms include high fever, rashes, and severe joint painBesides the red, painful blistering rash over the body that gradually grow to the size of a tomato, although the study authors note that not deadly.
The northern state of Uttar Pradesh issued a circular Friday recommending parents instruct their children to “do not hug or touch other children who have symptoms of fever or rashes”, indicated the local agency IANS. The alert is added to the one issued by the Indian government this week.
The good news, according to Sundararaman, is that it is a self-limited disease that “does not spread very quickly”although the increase in cases raises questions.
“I’m not sure the disease surveillance system is up to the task, although of course the systems are better in places like Kerala,” he explained.
“But it is very easy to isolate, because it is very visibleIf the public health sector is activated then we won’t have an epidemic,” Sundararaman said.
The authorities have indicated that at the moment
There is no specific treatment for the disease, also similar to chikungunya or dengue, so therapy is limited to taking medications such as paracetamol.
