Child at day care centre more likely to develop gastroenteritis

donderdag 8 januari 2015 16:00

Research carried out by RIVM and UMC Utrecht has shown that children who go to a day care centre are more likely to develop gastroenteritis (stomach flu). This has medical and economic consequences. Day care attendees need to see the General Practitioner twice as often and are admitted to hospital with complications twice as often. In the Netherlands the excess societal cost of gastroenteritis are estimated at 25 million Euro each year. Researcher Remko Enserink thinks that better implementation of existing infectious disease prevention measures would not only result in fewer sick children, but also in lower societal costs.