CHINA:NINETEEN CHILDREN have died and 789 have become infected with a virus in the eastern Chinese industrial city of Fuyang, according to state media.
News came nearly two months after the outbreak started, a reminder of the bad old days when information about health issues and epidemic outbreaks in China was normally kept secret..
The victims in Fuyang were struck with enterovirus EV71, one trigger of what is sometimes called "hand-foot-mouth disease". Officials said 204 patients were still in hospital.
Enteroviruses spread mostly via contact with infected blisters or faeces.
EV71 outbreaks have occurred in past years in Taiwan, Malaysia and some east European countries.
Fuyang in 2004 became the centre of a national scandal when several babies died after drinking fake milk powder that investigators later found had no nutritional value.
The report said the children, mostly aged from two to six, came to hospitals with "fever, along with blisters, ulcers in the mouth, or rashes on the hands and feet".
Local and central health ministry officials had gone to Fuyang to investigate the outbreak, help the patients and to "fully roll out prevention and control work," Xinhua, the official news agency, said.
Its report did not identify the source of the virus or say why Fuyang has been hit so badly.
Nor did it say why the outbreak was being publicly reported only now.
