A mum is urging other parents to be aware of the symptoms of Strep A infections and Scarlet Fever after thinking her daughter had a chest infection.
Joanne Jones, from Llandudno, said her eight-year-old daughter Jasmine started feeling unwell with a cough. She said she initially thought Jasmine had a chest infection, but her symptoms became progressively worse.
Joanne told the Daily Post : "Then it turned into some kind of sickness bug, so I thought she had one of those 24-hour things. But after four days of hardly eating, I knew it wasn’t just a bug. At times she seemed okay, then her temperature would spike to 40 degrees.
READ MORE: Mum's warning as her two children catch Strep A
“She would go bright red, and it felt like I was holding a hot water bottle from the heat coming off her face, back, and chest. Then she got more and more drowsy nearing the end of the week, to the point she just couldn’t stop coughing."
A rash on Jasmine's tongue and cheeks prompted Joanne to take her daughter to A&E at 2am, where she says she waited nine and a half hours to be seen. Joanne said: "He said 'I don’t want to alarm you with what’s in the media, but she’s got scarlet fever, which comes from a bacterial infection called strep A’.
"I said, ‘the one that’s killed children on the news?’, and he looked at me and said ‘yes’. "He gave me a prescription to start with immediate effect, and I was told to keep all three of my children off school as it’s highly contagious.”
Although Strep A infections are common, most often causing a relatively mild illness, nine children from across the UK have died in recent weeks after developing a rare complication. A complication, known as iGAS, is an invasive infection but rare. You can read more about the symptoms to look out for here
Figures released this week show that scarlet fever is on the rise. Between January and October this year, there have been 1,512 recorded cases of scarlet fever in the UK, which is caused by Strep A, compared to 948 in the same period last year. Strep A can also cause other types of infections, including throat, chest, and skin infections.
Joanne said now, seven days after becoming unwell, Jasmine is on her fifth penicillin tablet and is just starting to get her appetite back. Joanne's youngest daughter Ophelia, three, has also caught the infection, and she is worried it’s only a matter of time before her six-year-old son Louie also catches the bug.
She said: “Last night Ophelia was getting the exact same symptoms, a red rash on her face and spots on her tongue. Her temp was 39.3 degrees. She was coughing and sick. I called 111 who got me in touch with the out-of-hours, and they said they didn’t need to see her since her sister had it, so we could assume that’s what it was, and they left a prescription for the same drugs for me, which she started this morning.”
Joanne said her children also had white patches in their throats that were difficult to see as well as swollen glands. She added: “Louie seems totally fine, strangely, but I have a feeling he might be next as it’s highly contagious."
Joanne wants to warn other parents to act quickly if their children become poorly. She added: “One minute they seem completely fine and just turn so quickly."
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