REGIONAL> Top regional news
Panel formed to tackle deadly hand-foot-mouth disease outbreak
By Zhu Yanting (China Daily Guangxi Bureau)
Updated: 2009-07-21 15:18

An expert medical panel is rushing to the epidemic area of the hand-foot-mouth disease after the virus claimed lives of three children in less than two weeks.

Since July 7 three deaths and 72 cases have been reported in Guangxi, according to the local government.

The panel, formed by the Public Health Department of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, will pay special attention to Guangxi's rural areas where the standards of hygiene are alarmingly low.

The three children who died from the hand–foot-mouth disease (HFMD) were all from Pingdong county, south Guangxi.

Primary schools and kindergartens in Tonglao town - the hardest-hit area by the disease - have been temporarily suspended.

HFMD is caused by an enterovirus, a genus of viruses associated with several human and mammalian diseases. It is particularly common in infants and children spreading through direct contact with the mucus, saliva, or feces of an infected person.

Many kindergartens in Guangxi's rural areas failed to meet the standards of basic hygiene, which allows the virus to be easily passed from person to person.

The disease usually occurs in the summer with its peak period between May and July.

The common incubation period of the disease is between three and seven days. It usually lasts between seven and 10 days and in severe cases it may cause death.