The outbreak of encephalitis B that has claimed 19 lives in
Yuncheng City of north China's
Shanxi Province, is put under control, a local health official
said Sunday.
Effective measures have been taken to curb the spread of the
disease since the first case of encephalitis B was reported in the
city on July 13, said Zhou Ying, director of Yuncheng City Health
Bureau.
Local people were told how to protect themselves from
contracting the disease while the hygiene environment was cleaned
up and vaccination was enhanced in the affected and nearby areas,
Zhou said.
All these efforts have paid off and the epidemic situation was
put under control, Zhou said.
As of Sunday, Yuncheng reported 60 people infected with the
disease, 19 died, six have recovered and are discharged from
hospital, and 31 others were still hospitalized, of whom eight are
in a critical condition. Four people were being treated at
home.
Nine out of the 13 counties of the city, which has a population
of 5 million, have reported cases of encephalitis B, said the
Yuncheng City disease control center.
Daily report on the epidemic situation has been done by disease
control centers of Yuncheng city and the affected cities and
counties beginning Aug. 10.
Encephalitis B causes an inflammation of the brain that can be
contracted by people of all ages. It is usually the result of a
viral infection passed to humans by mosquitoes. The illness begins
with flu-like symptoms and severe headaches.
Many people who have fallen ill come from the rural areas of
Yuncheng and live on flood plains of the Yellow River, where there
is poor sanitation and good breeding grounds for mosquitoes, said
Zhou Ying, director of the Yuncheng Health Bureau.
Yuncheng reported about 30 cases of encephalitis B patients in
2005, according to Zhou. The number of encephalitis B patients in
Yuncheng accounts for over 50 percent of the total of Shanxi
Province every year, he added.
Patients are now being treated in hospitals of Yuncheng and
Yongji cities and Linyi County.
The Shanxi Provincial Health Department has allocated 400,000
encephalitis B vaccines to Yuncheng, which had only 20,000 vaccines
on hand, said Wang Jinsheng, deputy director of the center.
The vaccines will be allocated to different counties according
to the severity of the epidemic, Wang said.
The vaccinations will be given away free but people will be
charged three yuan (US$0.37) to administer the injection, Wang
said.
The people in Yuncheng are being told in a media blitz to clean
up their neighborhoods by sweeping away pools of standing water in
which mosquitoes can breed.
Yuncheng's hot weather and frequent rains have provided ideal
conditions for mosquitoes to breed. As temperatures drop next month
so will the number of cases of encephalitis, said Feng Lizhong, an
official with the Shanxi Provincial Health Department.
Six experts from the China Disease Prevention and Control Center
(CDPCC), dispatched by China's Ministry of Health, arrived in
Yuncheng on Friday. They have visited patients and collected
samples of the virus for laboratory analysis.
The team of experts are working with the Shanxi Provincial
Health Department on urgent measures to prevent the spread of the
deadly disease.
Over 80 percent of the victims found in the city are people over
the age of 30, said Liang Guodong, leader of the team of experts
and director of the virus research institute of the CDPCC.
Chinese Ministry of Health on Thursday urged better prevention
and control of encephalitis B after a dramatic rise in the number
of new cases in July.
Last month, the ministry received 2,314 reports of new
encephalitis B cases, up 43.73 percent over the same period of last
year. It also recorded 78 deaths from the disease, down 6.02
percent year-on-year.
The ministry noted it was a high season for encephalitis B and
called for local authorities to do more to prevent its spread.
China saw two widespread outbreaks of encephalitis B in the
1960s and the 1970s, prompting a nationwide vaccination
campaign.
However, over the last couple of years China reported between
5,000 and 10,000 cases of encephalitis B cases a year. Some local
areas have been ravaged by severe outbreaks.
On July 3, the ministry required local health officials to
report within 24 hours any outbreak of encephalitis B.
In the latest epidemic report, the ministry recorded 798 deaths
from infectious diseases in July, 175 more than the previous
month.
(Xinhua News Agency August 13, 2006)