Three children have died and 113 people have been sickened in southeastern China with hand, foot and mouth disease, state media reported yesterday.
All of the cases emerged early this month in the city of Jianou in Fujian Province, Xinhua news agency said, adding that 22 people were still hospitalized. The disease, which is common in China, took an unusually high toll in the first few months of the year, infecting nearly 25,000 people nationwide and killing 34, government figures indicated.
By comparison, 17 deaths were reported last year.
Symptoms of the highly contagious disease include fever and sores. It can result in death in children.
The outbreak earlier this year prompted the government to issue a national health alert.
Cases first emerged in large numbers in early March, but the problem was not made public until two months later.
This prompted the state press to accuse local officials of dragging their feet on raising the alarm.
Hand, foot and mouth disease is a common childhood illness, but the outbreaks in China have been linked with enterovirus 71, which can cause a severe form of the disease characterized by high fever, paralysis and meningitis.
Meanwhile, health experts said chronic illnesses such as cancer and heart and respiratory diseases were ticking time bombs in China, adding that Chinese must cut their intake of fatty foods and salt, stop smoking and start exercising.
Increasingly affluent Chinese in urban and rural areas consumed between 25 and 100 percent more fat each day in 2002 than in 1982, sharply raising the risk of heart disease and cancer, researchers wrote in The Lancet medical journal.
The report, by researchers in China and the US, is part of a special series on China’s health reforms.
While the country was plagued by infectious diseases before 1990, chronic illnesses are now its main health problem and accounted for 74.1 percent of all deaths in 2005, up from 47.1 percent in 1973, the researchers wrote.
Apart from a fatty diet, many Chinese consume a relatively high 12g daily dosage of salt, which the paper said accounted for hypertension in some 177 million Chinese adults.
Based on Chinese definitions, 22.8 percent of Chinese were overweight in 2002, up 39 percent from 1992. Some 7.1 percent in the population were obese in 2002.
The paper also drew attention to China’s smoking habit.
“One in every three smokers in the world is a Chinese man ... consumption of cigarettes increased to 2,022 billion in 2006, 17.4 percent higher than in 2002,” they wrote.
The average Chinese male smoker smoked 15 cigarettes a day in 2002, up from 13 in 1984.
“Hypertension and tobacco can be targeted health priorities. Reduction of salt intake should become a national campaign,” wrote the team, led by Yang Gonghuan of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing.
In another paper in The Lancet, a team at the Harvard School of Public Health said only 12 percent of hypertension patients in urban areas and 7 percent in the countryside were covered by treatment.
Xiao Shuiyuan of China’s Central South University and Matthew Korman of Stanford University warned of dire consequences.
“If present smoking trends continue, 100 million Chinese men will die [of smoking-related causes] between 2000 and 2050, with many of their family members squandering life savings in desperate attempts at treatment,” the two scientists wrote.
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