South China's Guangdong and Hainan provinces are quick in action to
respond to encephalitis B after 19 people have died from the
disease.
Guangdong Province yesterday set up a special task force as the
province witnessed the deaths of 18 residents from the disease,
most of whom are children under 14 years old.
The move came as Guangdong and the island province of Hainan came
under attack from the disease over the past week. Hainan reported
one death yesterday from its 12 patients.
The Ministry of Health has released an emergency call, urging
enhanced preventative measures including inoculation to curb the
deadly disease.
Ministry sources said yesterday that it will send investigative
teams throughout the country to check up on vaccination work in
different regions.
Speaking at a work conference on diseases prevention, Huang Huahua,
governor of Guangdong, said yesterday his province had to organize
a strong team of medical expert to focus on the treatment and
prevention of the disease.
The move aims to avoid or minimize the deaths caused by
encephalitis B, which has been detected in many cities in the
province which borders Hong Kong and Macao.
Huang urged local public health departments and hospitals to pay
special heed in treating the infectious illness and try to save all
the encephalitis B patients in the province.
Encephalitis B usually comes to its infectious peak period in
Guangdong between May and July.
To
prevent encephalitis B from spreading further in the province, the
Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Public Health has inoculated more
than 100,000 children across the province since the outbreak of the
disease earlier this month.
More than 90 percent of Guangdong's encephalitis B patients are
children under 14 years old. Many are children of the migrant
laborers.
An
official from the Guangdong Provincial Bureau of Public Health said
that his bureau would focus on vaccinating the children of migrant
workers who have followed their migrant worker parents to Guangdong
and organizing more anti-encephalitis B publicity in the following
months.
The official believed that encephalitis B had basically been
brought under control after great efforts have been made to fight
it.
The province had detected a total of 220 encephalitis B patients by
yesterday.
The port cities of Maoming and Zhanjiang in the western area of
Guangdong Province have even been hardest hit by the flu-like
disease, the official said.
(China Daily June 25, 2003)