Southern Vietnam monthly has 500 foot-hand-mouth patients hospitalised. According to the HCM City Pasteur Institute, the region has recorded 10 deaths by the disease so far this year, nearly 2 times more than the number claimed by petechial fever.

 

Doctor Luong Chan Quang of the HCM City Pasteur Institute warned that it is difficult to discover food-hand-mouth disease in children because not all patients have typical symptoms – water spots on their bodies. Patients who experience mental complications or encephalitis may suffer after-effects though they are saved.

 

Quang said of the ten deaths by foot-hand-mouth in the south, 7 were in HCM City. The doctor said that this epidemic boomed in HCM City for the first time in 2003, returned to the city for the second time in 2006 and broke out again in late 2007.Most southern provinces don’t have supervising systems for this epidemic.

 

So far this year, only seven of 20 southern provinces have released reports on foot-hand-mouth disease: Ben Tre with 215 patients, Can To 124, Dong Nai 197, Dong Thap 322, Kien Giang 261, HCM City 1,018 and Vinh Long 220.

 

The HCM City Pasteur Institute set up a network to supervise the disease early this year. According to reports from three big hospitals in HCM City – Children’s Hospitals 1 and 2 and the Tropical Disease Hospital – the total number of foot-hand-mouth patients in 2007 was 2,988, 30% up over 2006.

 

The local Department of Health said that 16 died from the disease in 2007 and only 3 in 2006. By May 8 this year, the city had 755 children with foot-hand-mouth disease.

 

The disease mainly attacks children of under 36 months old and it is transmitted through saliva, mucous and excrement.

 

Epidemiologists say the disease develops into an epidemic because of poor environmental hygiene in the rainy season. The disease is often caused by Coxsackie 16 and Enterovirus 71 viruses. The latter can cause serious mental complications and death.

 

Huong Cat

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