Most of the people hospitalized following an outbreak of encephalitis B in southwest China's Yunnan Province are children, the local health authority has confirmed.

The authority has sent an expert panel consisting of top pediatricians to Jiufang Township, 44 km from Shidian County, to investigate the outbreak.

"The hospital had received 53 suspected encephalitis B patients by Saturday night, and only three of them were adults," said Xu Shaojun, head of Shidian County People's Hospital.

Nearly 100 people in Shidian County of Baoshan, a city in the western part of the province, close to the China-Myanmar border, are being treated in local hospitals for the disease.

According to the county government, the first patient, a nine-year-old girl, was identified on April 16, and most of the patients come from five villages of Jiufang.

The township clinic could not meet the growing number of patients and started to transfer some of them to the People's Hospital in Shidian.

The number of patients confirmed to be suffering from encephalitis B is not yet available as most of their symptoms are still developing, the hospital said.

The last encephalitis B outbreak to occur in Jiufang Township was in 1991.

(Xinhua News Agency May 29, 2007)