草榴社区

Dear Parent/Carer

Please be advised that there has been one case of Chicken Pox in school and your child may have come into contact with this.

Some information about Chicken Pox is detailed below, if you have any concerns please contact one of the School Nurses.聽 Should your child become infected they should not return to school until the last spot to have appeared has scabbed and dried up.

The most commonly recognised chickenpox symptom is a red rash that can cover the聽entire body.

However, even before the聽rash appears, you or your child may聽have some mild flu-like symptoms including:

• feeling sick
• a high temperature (fever) of 38潞C (100.4潞F) or over
• aching, painful muscles
• headache
• generally feeling unwell
• loss of appetite

These flu-like symptoms, especially the fever, tend to be worse in adults than in children.

Chickenpox spots

Soon after the flu-like聽symptoms, an itchy聽rash聽appears. Some聽children and adults聽may only have a few spots, but others are covered from head to toe.

The聽spots normally appear in clusters and tend to be:

• behind the ears
• on the face
• over the scalp
• under the arms
• on the chest and belly
• on the arms and legs

But the spots can be anywhere on the body, even inside the ears and mouth, on the palms of the hands,聽soles of the feet and inside the nappy area.

Although the聽rash starts as small, itchy red spots, after about 12-14 hours the spots develop a聽blister on top and become聽intensely itchy.

After a day or two, the fluid in the blisters gets cloudy and they begin to dry out and crust over.

After one to two weeks, the crusting skin will fall off naturally.

New spots聽can keep appearing in waves for three to five days after the rash begins. Therefore, different clusters of spots may be at different stages of blistering or drying out.

Yours faithfully,

School Nurses