More than just a runny nose: Virus infections are currently breaking out in young children, which is alarming the children's clinics.
Stuttgart - In the group of often unvaccinated small children, infectious diseases have risen massively in the past few weeks.
According to the Ministry of Health on Thursday, these children have been more protected in their vicinity due to the pandemic in the past two years.
Therefore, they could not go through the normal and important development of their immune defenses.
"Now the germs are meeting inexperienced immune systems," said Oliver Heinzel from the Tübingen University Hospital.
According to the doctors, the wave of infections is mainly driven by the RS virus (RSV).
For this reason, Health Minister Manne Lucha (Greens) invited to a digital expert summit.
At the meeting on Thursday, the medical professionals' acute problems were discussed and possible ways out of the crisis were discussed.
The “bulwark” of pediatricians' practices provide outpatient care for over 90 percent of these sick children, said pediatrician Thomas Kauth from Ludwigsburg, who represented the professional association of paediatricians and the Baden-Württemberg Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians at the summit.
“An unusually large number of small children have to be admitted to children's clinics because of severe shortness of breath.
In the practices there is an increase to 160 to 180 percent of the very high case numbers of infectious children even before the Corona. "
The children's clinics are facing a real supply bottleneck, said Christian von Schnakenburg, chief physician at the clinic for children and adolescents at the Esslingen Clinic and state chairman of the Association of Leading Pediatricians and Pediatric Surgeons in Germany.
The RS virus - short for the respiratory syncytial virus - is a respiratory disease that adults can also become seriously ill. But it is especially dangerous for premature babies, infants and toddlers. “They can get extremely severe pneumonia. It is particularly problematic that two cohorts of children now meet who have not yet gone through the infection, "said Health Minister Manne Lucha (Greens).
According to the medical director of the children's emergency room at the Stuttgart Clinic, Friedrich Reichert, the number of hospitalizations for RSV has already exceeded the numbers that would otherwise be reached over five months in one and a half months.
If an influenza wave were added to this wave of infections, pediatrics would definitely be overloaded.
"Even now there are phases in which the emergency care of children can no longer be adequately guaranteed in places," said Reichert.
The same situation is emerging among established paediatricians.
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Pediatricians are also sounding the alarm in neighboring Bavaria.
In the Memmingen Clinic, several wards are already overcrowded and the children's emergency room is overloaded.
Children are only supposed to go to hospital there in an emergency.
"If your child shows signs of infection such as fever, cough, runny nose or diarrhea, this is in most cases not an emergency," said the clinic's chief physician.
dpa