By Dr. Humaira Gilani

By late summer, I can tell the season has turned without looking at a calendar. 

Children start filing into clinics with the same itchy rash spreading across their arms and faces, and I know Waav Pait has returned to Kashmiri households. 

The first spots look like nothing much, easy to dismiss as a mosquito bite or a heat rash, until the fever climbs and the skin fills with small, fluid-filled blisters that no child can leave alone.

Most families in the valley already know the drill. 

A grandmother names it correctly the moment she sees it. Calamine lotion appears from some cupboard where it has sat since the last outbreak. Nails get trimmed short, soft food replaces the usual meal, fluids are pushed all day. 

This household knowledge has passed down through generations, and I respect it. But what troubles me is the belief sitting underneath it: that chickenpox is simply something children have to endure on their way to adulthood.

That belief no longer holds.

The illness comes from the Varicella-zoster virus, spread through the droplets of a cough or sneeze, or through direct contact with fluid from an open blister. 

It can sit unnoticed in a child’s body for ten to twenty-one days before announcing itself with a low fever, tiredness, headache and........

© Kashmir Observer