They’re now making face shields to be used by clinical staff at Cook Children’s who are caring for patients with COVID-19 symptoms.

“We looked at the situation we’re facing, in the community and internally, and thought this is a great opportunity for us to get engaged,” said Brady Gendke, Vice President of Operations at Cook Children’s Home Health. “Right now, we’re producing about 20 face shields a day, which will help with some of the more intense COVID-19 isolation procedures that our doctors and nurses will be doing.”

With the help of a high-powered 3-D printer, the team is assembling the shields by hand. They hope to produce up to 200, which will be distributed to doctors and nurses at Cook Children’s Medical Center. Since the shields are made entirely of plastic, they can be properly cleaned and re-used, eliminating the risk of running out.

“It’s very important (to produce these shields) because you can help people survive and protect their health,” said Kirill Kirieiev, manager of the orthotics and prosthetics lab at Cook Children’s Home Health. “Then they can continue serving our patients and feel more protected. If we can accomplish this goal and make their life a little bit safer, that’s most important.”

The Home Health team is also creating cloth masks for Cook Children’s staff and visitors. Working in an assembly line, employees are stitching about 200 face masks a day. Earlier this week, Cook Children’s announced a new policy requiring staff, patients and visitors to wear masks at the medical center and other Cook Children’s locations. The masks produced by the Home Health department are being distributed for this purpose.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to give back in a different way,” said Gendke. “Home Health is often on the end of the spectrum as kids go home from the medical center. This is an opportunity for us to help kids going into the medical center, as well as other staff that are engaged in patient care.”

“I really appreciate that I can help people,” said Kirieiev. “That’s very important. We can improve our community and help our patients, and now doctors too. I’m really proud to be part of the system.”

And yet, unless it happens to your child, most of us never think of children having a stroke.

“Unfortunately pediatric strokes have been ignored for a long time as a true entity,” said Fernando Acosta Jr., M.D., associate director of Cook Children’s Pediatric Neurorehabilitation and Movement Disorder Program. “This has changed over the last few years. The awareness is increasing.”

Strokes in adults are often brought on by behavior such as cholesterol, high cholesterol, a history of smoking, too much alcohol and obesity. For children, strokes are usually caused by birth defects, infections such as meningitis and encephalitis, trauma and blood disorders such as sickle cell disease.

“A problem with pediatric strokes, in contrast to those in adults, is that in pediatric strokes, the causes and circumstances are incredible diverse,” said Marcela Torres, M.D. medical director of Hematology at Cook Children’s. “For example, the physicians at Cook Children’s Stroke Clinic see children from 0 to 18 years. Additionally, the potential causes of stroke vary radically from a neonatal stroke to the stroke in a teenager/young adult.

Related Disabilities

Stroke-related disabilities is another area where childhood and adult stroke survivors can differ.

While strokes in children can be devastating, the good news is children often have a better ability to heal because of the greater plasticity or flexibility of the child’s nervous system and brain. A child’s brain is still developing, therefore it may have a greater ability to repair itself. With the help of physical and speech therapy, most childhood stroke survivors recover the use of their arms, legs and speech.

Symptoms of a stroke

The most effective stroke treatments must be given within the first three hours after stroke symptoms start. By recognizing signs of stroke in children and acting fast, you can help medical professionals lessen a stroke’s damage to the child’s brain. Use the following tool to help you think F.A.S.T.:

For more information:

Approximately six in 100,000 children are affected by stroke. Here in the U.S., it is a leading cause of death among children. Nearly 60 percent of childhood strokes occur in boys. Because the causes and symptoms are so different, treating stroke in children requires specialized training, such as what they will receive at the Cook Children's Stroke and Thrombosis Program.