Q: My 12 months old daughter is suffering from fever for the last 35 days. The fever is not continuous; it comes alternatively for two-three days. Some days she has fever in the evening and sometimes at night. The weather in our city is humid. Is it due to the humidity? Her body remains hot. Is she not adjusted to this climate, as it’s her first summer in the city? We got a few test done last month; her WBC Count was 12,450 and blood TLC was 12,300 cells/mm3. We also had done malarial parasite, the results was negative. In urine culture, her colony count was 3000/ml and she was given Augmentin syrup for ten days. Also, the Widal, and dengue Elisa test results were negative. Her abdomen ultrasound result was also normal. We were asked to monitor her temperature for 10 days daily four times in a day. Most of the time her temperature was normal, only two days she had fever around 100.8 and two-three times it was 99.2 to 99.6. The doctor said that she has got viral fever. Since all her test done was negative so we have stopped all medicines now. Baby food intake is ok and she drinks lot of water. Last week she has the temperature of 100.6 and now till date its normal. For how many days viral fever exists in the body? Please advise.

A:Thirty-five days is rather too long for common viral fever. Please check the technique of your temperature recording. You should take the axillary temperature and keep the thermometer for 3 minutes and take the reading as such and not add any thing to the reading on the thermometer. If the recorded temperature is below 100.3 degree F and the child is other wise normal with all the investigations done so far which are normal, ignore this. However, if the fever is higher, she needs to be investigated for the cause of fever.