Dear Doctor,

I am a married mother of two girls. Lately with the cold and rainy weather, there has been a ‘flu cycle’ in my house. I think I was the first to catch the flu, then later on passed it on to my husband, who passed it on to the kids when playing with them.

Even when one of us is on the bout of recovering they pass it on to somebody else who makes sure that other household members are not free of it.

Are there any tips that you can recommend to effectively get rid of the flu which involves nasal blockage and coughs? Thank you.

Maria

Dear Maria

Flu is indeed one of the health hazards posed by rains and cold weather. Common flu is mostly caused by viruses. Since it is an infection, it is contagious. One person can pass on the infection to another through droplet infection. That implies that droplets expelled in the atmosphere by talking or sneezing can be inhaled by another person, he in turn getting infected.

The infection is even spread by fomites, for example, objects contaminated by an infected person’s nasal secretions. Common objects which can help in spreading infection are shared telephones, pens, etcetera.

It is in these ways that your family members are getting infected one after another.

Running of the nose, sneezing, blocked nose, headache, body ache or fever, a person may have one or more of these symptoms. Though troublesome, it is usually a benign condition which subsides spontaneously within a week. There used to be a dictum, common cold cures with medicines in less than a week and without medicines in seven days.

One tends to mix up common cold with allergic rhinitis, where symptoms may be similar. However allergic rhinitis tends to occur frequently with exposure to dust, or while travelling, or due to cold, or after exposure to other allergy producing substances.

The symptoms would be recurrent with one or more blood relatives also suffering from same symptoms.

As for other conditions, prevention is important in flu as well. Keeping the house well aerated with adequate sunlight coming in, keeps concentration of microbes to minimum in the atmosphere.

Having a cold, you should keep the nose covered while sneezing so that germs are not expelled. Use of disposable tissue is better than handkerchiefs which can be reused.

Handkerchiefs tend to gather germs and when used by same person or another, they carry the risk of spread of germs. Good hand hygiene is vital to prevent spread of flu.

Regarding treatment, steam inhalation is very useful whether for children or adults. Steam, when inhaled by a person, dissolves the nasal secretions and helps to expel them, clearing the nose effectively.

A person also benefits from keeping warm. This includes measures like wearing warm clothes, using warm bed clothes, drinking hot tea, cocoa, etcetera. Herbal remedies like basil decoctions also help.

If one has severe headache or body ache, painkillers like aspirin or paracetamol are helpful.

One should avoid the use aspirin with very young children as it can cause severe hypersensitivity reaction. Anti allergy drugs are not beneficial and antibiotics are not at all necessary. However if one has persistent symptoms after about a week or severe headache and or high fever or vomiting symptoms, he/she should be screened for other infections like malaria. Sinister conditions like swine flu also need to be excluded as their treatment needs antiviral drugs like Tamiflu.Dr. Rachna is a specialist in internal medicine at Ruhengeri Hospital.