The most important facts about hand-foot-and-mouth disease

The course is actually unmistakable: the children develop a fever for one or two days at most. This then subsides - and small blisters and red spots form in the mouth or oral mucosa. The same happens on the hands and feet, sometimes also in the genital area. Blisters and spots usually heal after five to seven days. Sometimes nail growth problems occur weeks later.

One problem is that the infected children are highly contagious, usually even before the fever occurs. This means that they are usually still at nursery school or school, so it is not really possible to prevent the virus from spreading. In rare cases, the virus can also spread to adults, although they are usually fully immunised.

There is very little that can be done to treat HFMK. Basically, everything goes away on its own. You can give something to relieve the pain and apply a gel, especially to blisters in the mouth, which also has a pain-relieving effect and contributes to healing.

A very important point is always the question of re-admission to kindergarten or school - and this is a bit complex. We paediatricians actually say that it is almost a developmental task of the kindergarten that children become infected with hand-foot-and-mouth disease during their kindergarten years. This is because the disease is much more harmless in childhood than in adulthood.

The Robert Koch Institute also says that there is actually no reason to exclude children from kindergarten. This is mainly for two reasons: Firstly, the children are simply already infectious before they fall ill and secondly, they continue to excrete the pathogens in their faeces for weeks or months.

Nevertheless, the consensus is that children should not be sent to nursery when the blisters are really blossoming, but should wait until the blisters have healed and scarred, so that the children are usually at home for a week.