Paediatrics and Child Health

Children rarely fall ill at a convenient hour. The paediatric service at SkyHigh runs on that assumption, which is why the hospital is open through the night and why a feverish child does not have to wait for a clinic to open in the morning.

We look after children from the first hours of life through to adolescence, covering newborn checks and jaundice, the national immunisation schedule, acute illness such as malaria, pneumonia and diarrhoeal disease, growth and nutrition, asthma and allergy, and the developmental milestones that worry parents long before they worry doctors.

The Nigerian childhood immunisation schedule

Nigeria's National Programme on Immunisation sets the schedule below. We give these vaccines at the hospital, record them in your child's card, and will tell you honestly if a dose has been missed and how to catch up rather than simply starting again.

• At birth: BCG, oral polio zero dose, hepatitis B birth dose
• 6 weeks: pentavalent 1, oral polio 1, pneumococcal 1, rotavirus 1
• 10 weeks: pentavalent 2, oral polio 2, pneumococcal 2, rotavirus 2
• 14 weeks: pentavalent 3, oral polio 3, pneumococcal 3, inactivated polio
• 6 months: vitamin A, and the first influenza dose where offered
• 9 months: measles first dose, yellow fever, meningitis A
• 15 months: measles second dose
• Additional vaccines available privately: typhoid, hepatitis A, varicella, HPV for adolescents

When a fever needs the hospital tonight

Most childhood fevers are viral and settle. A small number are not, and the difference is rarely the temperature reading. Parents are usually right when something feels wrong, and we would far rather see a well child at midnight than a sick one at dawn.

Bring your child in without waiting if any of the following is present: a child under three months with any fever at all, difficulty breathing or fast breathing, a child who is drowsy, floppy or difficult to rouse, a fit or convulsion, a rash that does not fade when pressed, persistent vomiting or inability to keep fluids down, no urine for eight hours or more, or a fever that has continued beyond three days.

Malaria, the default assumption that is often wrong

In Lagos almost every childhood fever is treated as malaria first. Sometimes that is right. Often it is not, and treating presumptively means a bacterial pneumonia or a urinary infection is missed for two or three days.

We test rather than assume. A rapid diagnostic test or blood film confirms or excludes malaria parasites within the hour, and where malaria is excluded we look properly for the actual cause instead of repeating antimalarials. This matters both for your child and for the wider problem of drug resistance.

Growth, nutrition and development

Every paediatric visit includes weight, length or height, and head circumference in infants, plotted against growth standards rather than judged by eye. A single measurement tells you little. A trend tells you a great deal.

We support exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and structured complementary feeding after that, and we assess feeding difficulties, faltering growth, iron deficiency and vitamin D concerns properly rather than reaching straight for supplements.