Posted on 04/26/2003 10:17:09 AM PDT by knighthawk
HANOI: An unidentified illness has killed 38 children and sickened more than 60 others in 17 Vietnamese provinces during the past three months, state-controlled media reported Saturday.
The disease is suspected of being part of the enterovirus group, the Lao Dong (Labor) trade union newspaper quoted the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City as saying. It is believed to attack the intestines and the brain.
However, officials have said it does not appear to be enterovirus 71, which killed 30 children in Malaysia in 1997 and more than 50 children in Taiwan in 1998.
Doctors and medical experts, along with the World Health Organization, completed an epidemiology survey in Ho Chi Minh City on April 15. They did not classify the illnesses as an outbreak because the cases did not appear to be linked and were scattered throughout many provinces, the newspaper said.
All of the children who succumbed to the disease experienced symptoms of high fever and convulsion. Nearly 70 percent died within a day of becoming sick.
Nguyen Van Thuong, vice minister of health, told health institutes to closely coordinate with one another to carry out a more thorough study of the disease and to work out uniformed diagnosis and treatment methods to be sent to all hospitals, it said.
Health officials have said the cases do not appear to be linked to severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, a new flu-like illness that has killed five medical workers in Vietnam and more than 290 people worldwide.
Dangerous times for infectious diseases.
An official said that all 7 children were one year olds who had died after admission to the An Giang General Hospital. The latest death was on Tue 22 Apr 2003. Symptoms were high fever and diarrhea, aggravated by respiratory and cardiac problems. Enterovirus infection is suspected, of the type that killed 30 children in Malaysia in 1997 and 50 in Taiwan the following year, with similar symptoms. Health authorities discounted the idea that these cases could be related to SARS, which has caused 5 deaths in Vietnam.
-- ProMED-mail
[The suspected enterovirus may be human enterovirus 71. The results of continuing collaborative studies to confirm this suspicion are awaited with interest. Sarawak has been experiencing a large outbreak of human enterovirus 71 that began in February 2003. Most cases have uncomplicated hand, foot and mouth disease, but a small number include neurological disease. Phylogenetic analysis of recent isolates of human enterovirus 71 by Jane Cardosa and colleagues in Sarawak indicate that several genogroups of the virus have been circulating in the Asia-Pacific region since 1997. Their results show that 80 per cent of current strains belong to genogroup C1, and it has been suggested that the next big outbreak of human enterovirus 71 in the region will probably be due to strains from this genogroup. The remaining strains belong to a distinct cluster within the B genogroup and may represent an emerging new sub-genogroup. - Mod.CP]
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