Ear pain

Ear pain is usually caused by infection of the outer or middle ear.

Left untreated, ear infections may lead to pus building up behind the ear drum and within the middle ear, causing it to burst and result in hearing impairment.

Outer ear infection is inability to hear can affect your child speech development, so do take ear infections seriously.

The skin on the outer ear canal becomes inflamed, swollen and red if your child has an outer ear infection, he will also experience pain and itchiness inside the ear.

The infection may have been caused by scratches or frequent swimming in chlorinated or unclean water.

If your child has eczema, he is likely to get an outer ear infection if water gets into his ear.

The solutions are:

• Take your child to a doctor and give him the recommended dose of pain killer to ease the pain.
• Do not let water get into your child ear during baths and use a sponge to wash his hair.
• No swimming until the infection clears up.

Middle ear infection is mostly middle ear infections occur with or shortly after a cold, the cold virus spreads from the nose and the throat to middle ear via a tube called the Eustachian tube.

There maybe severe ear pain with rubbing or tugging at the ear, high fever, loss of appetite, or even partials deafness.

Discharge from the ear usually indicates that the ear drum has perforated.

The consequences of middle ear infection are persistent ear discharge, impaired hearing, and even meningitis (inflammation of the coverings of the brain).

Preventing ear infections: if your child prone to ear infections, you may want to discourage him from swimming for a while, also apply menthol drops or rubs when he has a cold to unclog his nasal passages, this cuts down the risk of an infection spreading to the ear, or the alternatively, give him nasal decongestants obtained from doctor.

Another cause of ear infections is the pneumococcus bacteria, your child can be protected from this infection by immunization.