Health News
China hand, foot, mouth toll hits 42; Beijing sees 1st death (Roundup)
By DPA
May 14, 2008, 10:43 GMT

Beijing - Health officials on Wednesday reported three more deaths, including the first in Beijing, from virally transmitted hand, foot and mouth disease, which has infected about 27,500 children in China this year.

A child in Beijing's Chaoyang district died on the way to hospital Sunday, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Deng Xiaohong, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Health Bureau, as saying.

Another child died in a Beijing hospital but had travelled there from nearby Hebei province while a third child died in the central province of Hubei, the agency said.

The new fatalities raised the national death toll from hand, food and mouth disease to 42 for 2008.

The Health Ministry earlier this week said the epidemic had been brought under control and that more children were being discharged from hospitals.

Fuyang in the eastern province of Anhui, where more than 5,000 cases and at least 23 deaths were reported, and other parts of Anhui were the worst-affected areas.

The World Health Organization said last week that it was satisfied with China's efforts to curb the spread of infections.

Hand, foot and mouth disease is a common childhood illness that causes symptoms that include ulcers and blisters in the mouth, rashes on the hands and feet, and fever.

It is spread mainly by enterovirus 71, which is from the same family as the polio virus, but it can also be transmitted by several other viruses.

China recorded more than 80,000 hand, foot and mouth cases and 17 deaths in 2007, the Health Ministry said.

The virus mainly affects infants and young children and is life- threatening in a small number of cases owing to complications such as lung haemorrhages and meningitis.