Materia Medica Malaysiana

HFM ALERT: 37 down with HFM disease

Thirty-seven children in Penang have come down with the hand-foot-mouth disease since Jan 1. But it remains unclear if the children are suffering from the more virulent coxsackie virus.
Dr Ramlee Rahmat, the Health Ministry's Communicable Disease Control Division director, noted that there were 67 enteroviruses known to cause HFM disease.
"We have to know the virus that is attacking the children," he said, adding that it was the enterovirus 71, the most dangerous in the enterovirus family, that killed many of the 31 children during an outbreak in 1997.
Since 2000, Penang has been recording many HFM cases. In 2000 there were 459 cases followed by 776 in 2001, 1,384 in 2002, 436 in 2003 and 364 last year.
Dr Ramlee said that many children below five years of age in Penang could have come down with HFM because of poor personal hygiene and improper sanitation.
Dr Ramlee said the 334 sentinel centres - 106 private and 119 government health clinics and 109 treatment centres - nationwide were closely monitoring for any outbreak of the disease.
He said specimens taken from HFM disease victims were sent for analysis.
So far results showed they suffered normal symptoms of hand-foot-mouth disease.