Klao Bell, Staff Reporter
THE lack of training and the poor practices of some caregivers can put the health of children in whom the virus is undetected, at risk.
Most practical nursing courses include general information about the cause and prevention of HIV/AIDS, but does not cover training on how to maintain an environment that would prevent the condition of the HIV/AIDS-infected child from worsening.
Another parent, Patrick Wilson, wondered that, if his healthy son frequently picks up viruses at day care, how susceptible are those children who are HIV positive in the same setting?
"My son got gastro-enteritis two times last month, obviously they are not taking care to keep a properly sanitised environment. What happens if a child was HIV positive and they didn't know, his health would deteriorate even more if they are not taking the best of care. It's critical that they know how to handle children with HIV/AIDS," Mr. Wilson said.
Caregivers at several day care centres told The Sunday Gleaner that they did not know how to identify or care for a child with that disease. Others said, the thought had never crossed their minds since HIV/AIDS is not a contact disease.
"It would be hard to detect, we are trained caregivers not nurses," said Fay McClean of the Voluntary Organisation for the Upliftment of Children (VOUCHE) day care centre at Heroes Circle in Kingston.
At the Kids Time Nursery on Chelsea Avenue in New Kingston, a caregiver said she was self-educated on AIDS as it wasn't taught when she attended practical nursing school eight years ago.
"AIDS wasn't prevalent then...In any case it is very unique in children, though a child can appear healthy and still have it," said Dillion Scarlett.
Parents are required to provide background on their children's health and to ensure that he/she is fully immunised before being admitted into a day care centre.
Some nurseries do not ask for the medical history, and full immunisation does not preclude the existence of HIV/AIDS in children.
The universal precautions for caregivers emphasise quick cleaning and disinfection of areas where bodily fluids, such as blood or urine, have spilled.
It also states that latex gloves should be used in the cleaning unless a very small amount was spilled.
Some parents complained of seeing caregivers with "big orange" gloves or of going to centres and seeing, "wee-wee (urine) all over the place."
Fitz Brown, Director of the Day Care Unit of the Ministry of Education said there have been no reports of HIV-infected children in day care centres.
Acknowledging that caregivers were not trained to care for children infected with HIV/AIDS, he added that that the matter of admitting a child into a day care centre knowing that he/she is infected with the disease would have to be discussed as it has not come up before.
"Staff is not trained to deal with that situation so it wouldn't be wise to expose children to that setting," Mr. Brown said.
Between January and June 2001, 37 Jamaican children below 10-years-old were newly infected with HIV. Between 1982 and 2000, 450 cases of paediatric AIDS cases were reported to the Ministry of Health, 240 of whom have died.
"Most children get HIV/AIDS by vertical transmission, that is, they get it from their mothers. It is very unlikely that children will contract HIV/AIDS in a day care setting unless there is a set up where the child has an opening and the other child has an open wound and they come in contact and even then we are not sure it can be transmitted that way," advised Dr. Minerva Thame, vice president of the Jamaica Paediatric Association.
