Home › Prevention of Communicable Disease › Prevention of Communicable Disease: Chickenpox

Prevention of Communicable Disease: Chickenpox

In scarlet fever the eruption appears on the second day and gradually fades after two or three days. Chickenpox (Varicella). This is a mild disease of children of importance chiefly because the mild cases of smallpox may be mistaken for this disease. Chickenpox is ordinarily confined to children under six years of age. The initial symptoms are much milder than smallpox, although there may be fever, vomiting and pains in the back and legs. The eruption appears during the first twenty-four hours on the back, chest, or face in the form of red pimples which in a few hours become filled with a clear or turbid fluid. In three or four days the eruption dries up into scabs which soon fall off. There is little or no scarring.

Prognosis of Smallpox. -From the sixth to the eighth day after the onset of the disease the vesicles change to pustules with a slight depression in the center surrounded by a red border or halo. The temperature rises again, what is known as the secondary fever sets in, and the general symptoms return. Pustules are especially thick on the face which is much swollen and disfigured. On the twelfth or thirteenth day, about four or five days from their first appearance, the pustules begin to dry up. A few days later the scabs begin to fall off first from the face and later from other parts of the body.

The temperature falls to normal and convalescence begins.

Or, in severe cases such as the confluent form or hemorrhagic smallpox, the symptoms become more severe and death occurs, usually at the state of maturation, about the tenth or eleventh day. When recovery takes place, the process of desquamation, or peeling off of the scales, is usually completed in three or four weeks, but may extend to six or eight weeks.

Modes of Infection. -The virus of smallpox has an extraordinary vitality. Infected clothing and other articles may transmit the disease after an interval of months or even years.

Contagion may be direct from contact with the patient, or may be carried from the sick room on the person or clothing of the nurse or physician or by means of bedding and other articles. All who enter the sick room should wear a washable hooded gown. This should be disinfected on leaving the room as elsewhere recommended. After leaving the room the hands, face and hair should be washed in a disinfectant solution. The contagion exists in all the secretions and excretions of the body, and the exhalations from the lungs and perspiration. The pus from the pustules is the most fertile source of contagion and the dust from dried pus scales is the usual medium of its dissemination. The disease is most contagious while the eruption is in active progress, but begins to be contagious before the eruption appears and so continues until the process of scaling is complete.