On Saturday, Prof Dr. Arun Bansal, PGIMER, spoke on various issues relating to parents, pediatricians, and kids at a hybrid conference of North Zone Pedicon, which was organized by the Chandigarh Association of Paediatricians, in which around 600 delegates across the globe participated.
As per Dr Piyush Gupta (President, Central Indian Academy of Pediatrics), “A child doesn’t need to get vaccinated first and then go to school. Moreover, it is wrong on the part of the school administration to ask parents to sign the consent form for sending kids to school. We, as IAP would speak to the government to stop this practice as it compromises the psyche of kids and parents both. IAP has created such guidelines for parents and people in common to understand what and how to handle kids during the pandemic.”
Dr. Bansal told The Daily Guardian, “It has been seen in kids that due to pandemic, increased screen time, lockdown their BMI was increased, many institutes like PGIMER did BMI study on kids, and it is found that Body Mass Index was increased 17.3 to 17.8 in just a few months. Hence, Vaccination is important but stopping kids to go school or doing physical activity may prove out to be more taxing on kids than this virus.”
Talking further Dr. Bansal and Dr. Arun Prasad said, “Maybe kids are blessed to natural antibodies against the virus but kids who had exposed to the virus, might have remained asymptomatic or moderately sick but the real problem started after the six months of the virus when the child had recorded multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), a post-Covid complication. So far, PGIMER has seen 100 such complications, where lungs and other organs of kids got compromised yet PGIMER was able to treat them all.”
The organizing committee comprises of Dr Piyush Gupta (President, Central Indian Academy of Pediatrics), Dr GV Basavraj (Hon. Gen. Secretary, CIAP), Dr Ramesh Kumar (President-Elect, CIAP), Dr. Purna Kurkure (Treasurer, CIAP), Dr. Sangeeta Yadav (Organising Chairperson), Dr. Arun Bansal (Scientific Converner), Dr. Gaurav Gupta (Co-Organising Chairperson), Dr. Arun Prasad (Organising Secretary), Dr. Kanya Mukhopadhaya (Scientific Convener), Dr. Roosy Aulukh (Scientific Committee), and Dr. Gunjan Baweja (Co-Organising Secretary).