Hoang
Tu Anh of Tan Binh District in HCM City was surprised and even doubtful when
the doctor said her five-year-old daughter had severe gastritis.
Her daughter Tran Hoang Tuyet could not get
the disease because she was very careful about the food she gave her, Anh, 35,
thought.
To her mind she never gave the child food that
was not cooked properly or unhygienic.
But Tuyet herself had often complained about
stomachaches though she regularly took anthelmintic tablets to get rid of
intestinal worms, Anh said.
Dr Nguyen Anh Tuan of the City University
Medical Centre's paediatric department said that most children got gastritis
because of psychological factors like force-feeding.
Since gastritis was harder to diagnose in
children than adults, parents should take their children to a doctor when they
complained about stomachaches, he said.
Like Tuyet, Nguyen Thanh Phuong, four, was
also diagnosed with gastritis, but this time caused by Helicobacter pylori (HP)
infection.
She had stomachache and was vomiting and pale.
She is recovering after eight weeks of
treatment.
Tuan said children easily fell prey to HP,
leading to gastritis.
The rate of children infected with HP was 18 –
45 per cent in developed countries and 40-80 per cent in developing ones.
In Viet Nam, the rate of infected children
aged between six months and 15 years who did not show any symptoms was 34 per
cent, he said.
The rate soared to 71.4 per cent among kids
living in shelters.
Dr Pham Thi Ngoc Tuyet, head of the HCM City
Paediatric Hospital No.2's gastro-eneterology department, said HP infection
could easily lead to gastritis and duodenitis.
A study of 135 children with HP infection by
gastro-eneterologists in HCM City found 26.7 per cent of them getting gastritis
and 14.8 per cent of them duodenitis, she added.
Prof Nguyen Chan Hung, chairman of the Viet
Nam Cancer Association, said HP was one of the main causes of stomach cancer.
In Viet Nam, stomach cancer was the most
common followed by liver and lung cancers.
Some 13,000 people got stomach cancer every
year while 10,000 died because of failure to treat in time.
HP, which was often transmitted from mother to
child through food she chewed to feed the child, and lack of vegetables in the
diet worked together to cause stomach cancer.
Tuan said gastritis among children was a
chronic disease and hard to diagnose.
So parents needed to be patient and follow
doctors' instructions.
They should not get HP tests done unless the
doctor prescribed it.
Tuyet said hygiene, eating well-cooked food
and drinking boiling water, and avoiding crowded places were the best way to
avoid HP infection.
Moreover, children should not be given tea or
coffee or food with oil.
When children with gastritis got other diseases,
parents should inform doctors so that they avoided medicines that could affect
the stomach.
Source: VNS
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