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WHO head urges to pay special attention to inflammatory syndrome in children

16 May 2020 09:28 (UTC +04:00)

The inflammatory syndrome in children, registered in Europe and North America amid the novel coronavirus outbreak, requires urgent attention by the global community, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva, APA reports citing TASS.

"In the past weeks, reports from Europe and North America have described a small number of children being admitted to intensive care units with a multisystem inflammatory condition with some features similar to Kawasaki’s disease and toxic shock syndrome," he said. "Initial reports hypothesise that this syndrome may be related to COVID-19."

In his words, "it is critical to urgently and carefully characterize this clinical syndrome, to understand causality and to describe treatment interventions."

"Together with our global clinical network for COVID-19, WHO has developed a preliminary case definition and a case report form for Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children," Ghebreyesus said. "I call on all clinicians worldwide to work with your national authorities and WHO to be on the alert and better understand this syndrome in children."

According to Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the technical lead for WHO’s emergencies program, the organization has requested pediatricians all over the world to share their findings with the WHO in a bid to gain more information.

"It seems to be a very rare syndrome, but we need more information," she said. "And we need more information collected in a systematic way, because, with the initial reports, we are getting a description of what it looks like, which is not always the same. In some cases, the children tested positive for COVID-19, and other children have not. So we don’t know if this is associated with COVID-19."

"So, what we have done is through our clinical network and together with our partners is put together this case report forms. This is a data collection tool, which clinicians can use to collect standardized information, so we can better understand what this disease looks like, how we can better develop treatments for this, and that’s important," she added.

According to Agence France Presse, the first death of a child with symptoms similar to the Kawasaki Disease, has occurred in France. Earlier, there were reports of at least 15 children in similar condition. Some researchers link the condition to the novel coronavirus infection, although there is no data to prove it so far, and the authorities dismiss this information as premature.