Childcare infection

Infection in childcare is the spread of infection during childcare, typically because of contact among children in daycare or school. This happens when groups of children meet in a childcare environment, and there any individual with an infectious disease may spread it to the entire group. Commonly spread diseases include influenza-like illness and enteric illnesses, such as diarrhea among babies using diapers. It is uncertain how these diseases spread, but hand washing reduces some risk of transmission and increasing hygiene in other ways also reduces risk of infection.

Due to social pressure, parents of sick children in childcare may be willing to give unnecessary medical care to their children when advised to do so by childcare workers and even if it is against the advice of health care providers. In particular, children in childcare are more likely to be given antibiotics than children outside of childcare.

The presumption behind the idea of a "childcare infection" is that a place in which many children come into contact with each other can be a focus of infection, which is a place where infections are able to spread from person to person.

Flu and respiratory tract infection are lessened in groups which use frequent hand washing, but the actual pathway through which the diseases spread is unclear except for the fact that hand washing disrupts disease transmission.

Diseases related to the human gastrointestinal tract, like diarrhea or other enteric illness, often spread through the fecal-oral route and are especially common in places where children have not completed toilet training. Diapers, confined spaces for changing diapers, and the unhygienic habits of children contribute to the spread of these infections. Bacterial infections most often spread through person to person contact, while eating food, or through the presence of animals. It is difficult to determine how viral agents causing enteric illness spread. Reviews of Helicobacter pylori have been unable to determine how it spreads during childcare, but have confirmed that it does easily spread in childcare environments, and that it is difficult to make recommendations for preventing it.

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