Thai health staff on alert against HFMD

BANGKOK, July 12 (TNA) - Local public health staff, especially those working near the Thai-Cambodian border, have remained on high alert to closely monitor and prevent any outbreak of a lethal strain of the hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) from neighbouring Cambodia. In Buriram and Si Sa Ket provinces in the Northeast bordering Cambodia, where over 60 children have been killed by the fatal D4 genotype of the enterovirus 71 strain of HFMD so far, local public health staffs and school teachers have kept closely monitoring the situation. In Buriram alone, some 131 people, mostly children aged under 4 years, have been found with a non-virulent strain of the HFMD since early this year but there have been no reports of any death; while schools and child care centres in Si Sa Ket are now frequently conducting health check-up and screening students with HFMD-like symptoms, as parents have also been urged to closely watch out their children. Meanwhile, a child care and development centre in Pa Tiew district of Thailand's northeastern Yasothon province has announced a one-week closure, after a child was reported to have contracted the HFMD, prompting parents to have picked up their children home and local public health officials to have closely monitored the situation. The centre's staffs are, thus, conducting a big clean-up for children's desks, chairs, toys and the overall compound to prevent or contain more spreading of the HFMD. Thai Permanent Secretary for Public Health Dr. Paijit Warachit said on Wednesday that the HFMD in Thailand is of the B5 genotype of the enterovirus 71 strain, which is not virulent, but the HFMD in Cambodia is of the D4 genotype of the enterovirus 71 strain, which is fatal, and that all genotypes of the HFMD virus exist in all countries but only one-tenth of them is virulent. (TNA)