THE CHILD-KILLING ****HEAD CHRISTIAN GOD, BUSY AS USUAL, MURDERING CHILDREN
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354045,00.html
BEIJING - China's Health Ministry issued a nationwide alert Saturday in
a
bid to control a virus that has caused the deaths of 22 children in one
city
and shows signs of spreading.
Health bureaus around the country must step up monitoring for hand, foot
and
mouth disease following a "relatively large" outbreak in the central city
of
Fuyang, the Health Ministry said in a notice on its Web site. The ministry
warned that cases were more numerous this year than in recent years and
that
the peak for transmission would likely come in June and July.
The warning has been prompted by a jump in cases in the Fuyang outbreak of
Enterovirus 71, or EV-71, a type of hand, foot and mouth disease.
Up to Thursday night, 3,321 cases of the virus were re****ted. Besides the
22
deaths, 978 people remain hospitalized, 58 of them in serious or critical
condition, the ministry said in a separate statement.
Meanwhile, state-run Xinhua News Agency re****ted that preliminary tests
showed an 18-month-old boy who died Friday in southeastern Guangdong
province was infected with EV-71, and a second suspected death is under
investigation. Cases of hand, foot and mouth outbreaks, but not
necessarily
EV-71, have been re****ted in at least two other provinces.
"Health bureaus at all levels must recognize the im****tance and urgency of
preventing the spread of infectious diseases and must put priority on
preventing and controlling the spread of infectious diseases," the
ministry
said in its nationwide order.
Hand, foot and mouth disease are viruses that cause fever, mouth sores and
rashes with blisters. Spread by contact with the mucus discharges or
stools
of infected people, the viruses mainly strike children 10 years and
younger,
and in some cases can cause fatal brain swelling.
The outbreak is another concern for the communist government as it gears
up
to welcome hundreds of thousands of foreigners for this summer's Beijing
Olympics and deals with unrest in Tibetan areas of western China. It's
also
an uncomfortable reminder of the SARS pneumonia outbreak in 2003, which
Beijing tried to cover up but then adopted drastic measures to control.
State media re****ted earlier this week that the government's response in
Fuyang, a fast-growing city surrounded by farmland in Anhui province, had
been slow, allowing rumors to spread about the outbreak.
The China Youth Daily re****ted earlier this week that some re****ts had
suggested the virus was a "children's SARS," while others claimed it was a
"type of bird flu that could infect people."
Since the SARS crisis, the government has increased spending on the
detection and monitoring of communicable diseases.
In several announcements Friday and Saturday, the Health Ministry
increased
the monitoring network, ordering regular re****ts on outbreaks of hand,
foot
and mouth diseases. It also sent expert teams to Anhui province to lead
treatment and prevention.
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