Question

Meena is sick showing symptoms like fever, fatigue, vomiting and watery diarrhea resulting in dehydration. What treatment methods should her family follow for this disease?

Answer 1

Meena’s symptoms are fever, fatigue, vomiting and watery diarrhoea indicating that she is infected and suffering from dysentery. It is a bacterial disease caused by Shigella bacteria. The bacteria when present in the human gut causes bacillary dysentery, an intestinal infection causing inflammation in the intestines results in bloody diarrhea. It spreads through contaminated food and water.
The first step to treat dysentery at home is to rehydrate the body of the patient as she has lost fluids from her body due to diarrhoea. Thus the family can provide her with Oral Rehydration Solution/ Salts (ORS) can be used for this. Being a bacterial infection physician will prescribe antibiotics to clear out bacteria from the system. In severe cases blood transfusion may be required.Antibiotics and blood tranfusion are treatment methods to be decided by the physician and not the family members.