In a dozen countries in Europe as well as in several places in Canada, children are suffering from a mysterious hepatitis, the cause of which is still unknown.
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“Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver. Everything that ends in “itis” in medicine consists of an infection,” begins Dr. Fernando Alvarez, director of the liver transplant program at CHU Ste-Justine.
A hypothesis put forward by Public Health in Great Britain would like the mysterious virus to be a viral infection.
The symptoms to watch out for, according to Dr. Alvarez, are similar to those of gastroenteritis. One could observe vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, fatigue but above all a change in the color of the skin towards yellow.
“Parents can look at the white of their child’s eye in daylight; it’s the most rigorous way to know if it’s hepatitis,” says Dr. Alvarez.