The woman is in the 18. Week of pregnancy, when she goes to the emergency room of a hospital in the U.S. state of Kansas. She suffers from heart palpitations and fever. In addition, a rash on your skin that itches and burns. However, the Doctors send you back home.
Three days later, they tried it in a different emergency room. There, the medics, the 27-Year-old say that she had an allergic reaction. What tests do the Doctors in the two clinics, before you dismiss the patient, report the authors present the case in the weekly report from the U.S. center for disease control CDC.
You are looking on the Internet for a diagnosis
With the Allergy diagnosis, the woman is not satisfied. She is now trying to find out for themselves what she has and looks on the Internet. In the process, she finds something Disturbing: your symptoms could suggest rubella. The infectious disease is, particularly in the first third of the pregnancy is highly dangerous. Because you can cause permanent damage to the unborn child or even cause miscarriage. A vaccination can protect against infection, but the woman is not vaccinated against rubella.
She contacted her gynecologist and tells of her suspicions. The gynecologist sends the patient to their doctor. Just a week after their first visit to the emergency room this makes, finally, a blood test. Two days later, The 27-Year-old has made the right diagnosis: she has rubella.
The health authorities know on the same day, quite by accident of the diagnosis: As the woman picks up her daughter from school, she reported to the school nurse of; this informs the competent authority in Johnson County, Kansas.
The experts there will ask themselves two key questions:
- Who has the Pregnant? The disease is considered to be in the whole of America as eradicated.
- Who could have infected the woman in turn?
The first question you can answer quickly. Two and a half weeks prior to her illness, the patient visit from her 22-year-old brother, had just returned from a trip to India. There are – as in Germany – are still cases of Rubella. The man had to travel a rash on both legs. A now performed the blood test confirmed that he has antibodies against the rubella virus in the blood, indicating a recent infection.
Also the brother was not vaccinated
The incubation period – the period between infection and first symptoms is rubella, two to three weeks. Patients are already seven days before the appearance of the rash and up to seven days after its decay contagious.
This fits to the assumption that the woman has in her brother. He is not vaccinated, like his sister, against rubella. Rubella viruses are transmitted by droplet infection, for example when Sneezing or coughing.
The health authority is now, with whom the woman had in the past few days of contact, possible further rubella to track patients. Only three of the approximately 120 contacts are not vaccinated against rubella: the woman’s daughter, a colleague, and a hospital employees. You will be advised to avoid Pregnant for about three weeks, the contact. The daughter is taken to be the time from the school, the hospital staff cannot get to work.
A woman is ill within the first twelve weeks of pregnancy, to rubella, the risk is 90 percent that the child suffered permanent damage, including heart defects, brain damage, deafness, and Defects of the eyes can. Between the 13. and 16. Week of pregnancy decreases the risk significantly, according to the Robert Koch-Institute. The rubella occur in the 20. Week, or later on, accompanied by the only in individual cases with consequential damage to the child.
In Germany, the rubella occur only very rarely. According to RKI, there are about 20 to 40 cases per year. That a Pregnant woman falls ill and your child gets hurt, is accordingly very rare – in 2013 there were, according to the Institute last such case.
For the 27-Year-old, the story takes a good outcome: your Baby comes into the world healthy.
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