"New updates" China reports two more deaths from child virus

by stvalentine | May 8, 2008 at 07:17 am | 209 views | add comment

Chinareported two more deaths on Thursday from a severe strain of hand, footand mouth disease, bringing its toll from the outbreak to 30, all ofthem young children, Xinhua news agency reported.

Hand, foot and mouth is a common childhood illness, but the current outbreak has led to fatalities in China, mostly when linked with enterovirus 71 (EV71), which can cause a severe form of the disease, characterized by high fever, paralysis and meningitis.

China also reported an additional 4,000 cases of hand, foot and mouth, bringing the total to nearly 20,000 across the country this year, but said the rise was due to better reporting of the outbreak, not the spread of the disease.

"The rising number is not a sign of a deteriorating situation," Xinhua said.

The two latest deaths were both on China's southern island province of Hainan, a tropical area popular with tourists.

The outbreak has centered on Fuyang city, in the poor, eastern province of Anhui, were 22 have died, but several other regions have reported fatalities.

Some 104 patients in Anhui remained in a critical condition, Xinhua said.

The World Health Organisation has said that China was not facing a new or more virulent strain of hand, foot and mouth, despite an unusually high number of child deaths.

questions remain about why there has been such a large cluster of casesin Fuyang and why they presented unusual symptoms that made itdifficult to identify the virus..........!

China's capital reported Wednesday its first death from the hand,
foot and mouth disease virus that has sickened tens of thousands of
children across the country and killed at least 42 people.

The
child died Sunday on the way to a hospital, the state-run Xinhua News
Agency said, citing Beijing Health Bureau spokeswoman Deng Xiaohong.

The director of the health bureau's publicity office, contacted by telephone, declined to comment on the death.

The
health bureau also told Xinhua that another child died of the illness
in Beijing, but the death was counted in the victim's home province of
Hebei, which neighbors Beijing. A 21-month-old boy also died of the
virus Monday in Hubei province, Xinhua reported.

The three newly
reported deaths raise the countrywide death toll to 42 since late
March. Hand, foot and mouth disease has sickened more than 24,934
children in seven Chinese provinces plus Beijing, Xinhua reported.