Wash away the ‘pink eye’

More than 164 million school days are missed each year in American public schools due to infectious diseases, according to the American Journal of Infection Control. Three million of those desks are vacant because of conjunctivitis, better known to people of all ages as pink eye.
“Take the child to the doctor and keep the kid out of school,” said Kitty Loewy, spokeswoman for the Cook County department of public health. “And teach the child good hand hygiene. Frequent hand washing helps prevent pink eye. On top of that, no sharing of community-type items like towels, make-up and eye droppers will help.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, pink eye can be both bacterial and viral. Doctors can identify the difference with a 10-minute test and prescribe the proper antibiotic. After 24 hours on the medication, most students are allowed back into class with a note.

Conjunctivitis is not simply a children’s disease. Princeton and Dartmouth universities had more in common this past March than their Ivy League status. The two schools were linked by a wave of conjunctivitis that traveled across several states infecting more than 1,000 students at the two schools in March.

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