[Scarlet fever outbreak in a public school in Granada in 2012].

INTRODUCTION

Scarlet fever is a streptococcal disease characterized by a skin rash in children. It can be endemic, epidemic or sporadic. In April 2012, the headmaster of a primary school in Granada reported an outbreak of scarlet fever in the school.

OBJECTIVE

To describe an outbreak of scarlet fever, analyse its epidemiological and clinical characteristics, and present the preventive measures taken to control it.

PATIENTS AND

METHODS

A case-control study was conducted using an ad hoc questionnaire, developed for this purpose. The R program, Epidat 3.1 and Microsoft Excel were used for the statistics analysis.

RESULTS

There were 13 cases and 30 controls. The attack rate was 3.9%. There was a statistically significant difference for the variable "relative affected".

CONCLUSION

There has been a confirmed outbreak of person-to-person transmitted scarlet fever, and the main risk factor was having a relative with tonsillitis.