Lucy Piper: Children often get hot and sticky running around and is normally nothing more than getting a bit over heated. So, when should we worry and what we do if our child is running a high temperature. With me is Yvonne from St. John Ambulance with mum Palvi and Neon. First of all Yvonne, I don’t even know how to take a baby’s temperature. How would I do that?
Yvonne Dormer: Well, it has to be a different from an adult, normally kid used to putting a thermometer in the mouth, but small people don’t get the idea of keeping under their tongue.
Lucy Piper: Under their tongue.
Yvonne Dormer: So, a little bit complicated, so we have to use another way. Various methods you can either use a same thermometer, but put it under the arm pit, hold the arm down as long it’s skin to skin and hold the arm against the chest keep it there for two or three minutes or you can get the strips, the heat sensitive and you just hold them on the forehead that probably the simplest and easiest to use.
Lucy Piper: So, what is normal? What’s the normal temperature for a child?
Yvonne Dormer: Working in centigrade it’s 37, average temperature for any body is 37 degrees.
Palvi Karia: So, tell far about normal should I start to worry?
Yvonne Dormer: You actually have to be concerned if it goes just two degrees out, so at 39 you would start to be a bit concerned. If it goes much higher than that, then that really is course of concern.
Palvi Karia: So, what should I do at that point?
Yvonne Dormer: At 39 degrees, you can do various things, you can give them their normal preparatory medicines that you could use to take temperatures down the paracetamol based ones, but really effective is just getting them towards little clothing is possible, and then sponging their body with tepid water. Not cold, just as it feels to you cool, sponge them all over, let it dry them, actually and that will help to reduce the body temperature.
Lucy Piper: What’s the cold, which child do high temperature?
Yvonne Dormer: Usually infection of some kind with their infections and as such like temperatures can shoot up in moments literally, but you probably going to have something else as a contributory factor.
Lucy Piper: Okay. Obviously, you’ve got two children, haven’t you? So, say if means if go high temperature, should she keep her rather little girl away from him?
Yvonne Dormer: It’s always useful to keep them separated because you don’t the disease to spread, you’re never sure if he has infection, you don’t want the other children to get it maybe a communicable disease, it may just be little bit of cold or flee developing.
Palvi Karia: Teething.
Yvonne Dormer: Teething, yeah absolutely.
Palvi Karia: Yeah, in sometimes.
Lucy Piper: Okay. What about if the child just wants to sleep? Is that quite dangerous just to let them sleep with a high temperature?
Yvonne Dormer: Very often having a high temperatures, the body’s natural way offending of an infection, sleep is one of the things that will also help that. So, as long as they don’t sleep to deeply of a too long then sleep is a good heating mechanism.
Lucy Piper: At what stage should you be worrying perhaps taking them to hospital or to the Doctors?
Yvonne Dormer: If a high temperature persists for anything over 24 hours, they really do need to see medical aid.
Lucy Piper: Thank you very much Yvonne. So, let’s reminded ourselves what to do if your child has a high temperature. 37 degree centigrade is normal, 39 degrees is a fever, so you’ll need to sponge your child down with tepid water and give medication. If your child’s temperature is 40 degrees or above this is serious and you will need to call an ambulance.
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