>> Vietnamese hand, foot and mouth disease death toll mounts to 109
The recent increase in hand, foot and mouth disease is a growing cause for concern among health officials.
Most patients are children under five
Increasing number of patients
According to the ministry’s Preventive Medicine Department, there were an additional 2,734 hand-foot-mouth cases reported during the week of September 16-22, including two fatalities. This brought the total number of cases up to 55,055, with 111 deaths.
The south of the country has been a hot spot for the spread of the disease, accounting for nearly 70% of the total cases and just over 89% of all the fatalities on record. Among hardest hit areas are Quang Ngai, HCM City, Dong Thap, Hoa Binh, Dong Nai and Ben Tre.
On September 20 there was one confirmed death from the disease in the capital city of Hanoi.
Sterilisation of toys one preventative measure
Danger
Even though earlier the Department of Preventive Medicine forecast that there would be no outbreak of hand-foot-mouth disease in the northern region, to date the disease has been found in 26 out of total 28 cities and provinces in the region.
Among the National Institute of Hygiene & Epidemiology (NIHE)’s 1,262 disease samples that are positive to the virus causing hand-foot-mouth disease, 700 are positive to Enterovirus 71 (EV71), which is of great danger and easily causes fatality.
Tran Thanh Duong, the department’s Deputy Director said, “This disease may continue to spread in November and, unfortunately, may cause more fatalities because there is no vaccine and treatment is limited."
He said that one of the reasons for the outbreak is a lack of knowledge among parents about good hygienic practices for their children.
Although there is no vaccine against the disease, there are a number of steps that would greatly reduce the risk of contracting it.
