Kawasaki Disease

With the launch of Citizen Set, Ruby Red, Conscious Citizen will be donating 10% of proceeds to UK’s Kawasaki Foundation, Societi Foundation to help educate and raise awareness for Kawasaki Disease.


Conscious Citizen’s Co-Founder, Maria Bond's eldest daughter, Myla (7), was diagnosed with Kawasaki Disease at the age of 6 months old. With a combination of trusting their parental intuition to go against the doctor’s orders to ‘stay home, it’s just a virus’ and being greeted with a pediatric doctor at the hospital who had just finished her research in Kawasaki Disease, the star’s aligned. After 7 days of trying nights in the hospital and 2 doses of immunoglobulin, Myla had minimal heart damage and is now thriving at life!

 

What is Kawasaki Disease?

Kawasaki Disease causes inflammation in the walls of small to medium-sized blood vessels that carry blood throughout the body. Kawasaki disease most often affects the heart arteries in children. These arteries are super important as they supply oxygen-rich blood to the heart. With early diagnosis and treatment, most children get better and have no long-lasting problems.

 

Why it Matters.

  • Kawasaki Disease is the #1 cause of acquired heart disease in children in the UK. 
  • Kawasaki Disease cases are on the rise – worldwide and a disease all parents need to be aware of.  
  • Low awareness of Kawasaki Disease means it’s often initially misdiagnosed, putting children’s hearts at risk of lifetime damage!  
  • Lifelong, life-threatening heart damage results in a quarter of children affected
  • Kawasaki Disease is very serious – it can be fatal in up to 3% of cases if not treated and about a quarter of all children affected will go on to have lifelong heart damage, despite treatment. 
  • Societi research indicates about 1,000 UK hospital admissions for Kawasaki Disease will happen this year. 
  • Once considered a rare disease, incidence is rapidly rising globally and it is now increasingly common– more common than some forms of meningitis, and with more children hospitalized for Kawasaki Disease than measles

 

Symptoms

  • High temperature that lasts for 5 days or more and often won’t come down, even with children’s paracetamol or ibuprofen. 
  • Children sometimes develop a rash, swollen glands in the neck, dry, cracked lips, red fingers or toes and red, bloodshot eyes. 
  • Children with Kawasaki Disease are characteristically irritable too. 
  • Not all symptoms develop in all children.
What to do.
  • If your child has a fever that lasts more than three days, contact your child's healthcare professional. 
  • Treating Kawasaki Disease within 10 days of when it began may reduce the chances of lasting damage to the arteries that supply the heart.

Leaving Kawasaki untreated or being misdiagnosed means a heightened risk of serious heart problems in later life and needing specialist care for life. Experts have linked these high levels of heart damage in the UK to lack of awareness amongst doctors and the general public. Studies show links between treatment delay and a higher risk of life threatening heart damage. By getting Kawasaki Disease known Societi Foundation is working to protect children’s hearts from this lifelong damage. Please know Kawasaki Disease!

 

References:

By raising awareness of Kawasaki Disease, Societi aims to enable children to have access to timely diagnosis and treatment – to improve outcomes for children. Societi Foundation is a registered charity in England & Wales (no 1173755), established in 2015 we have a specific focus on Kawasaki Disease. More information at www.societi.org.uk