A viral hand-foot-and-mouth disease killed a 14-month-old boy in eastern China’s Shandong province, state media reported.
Hand-foot-and-mouth disease is a mild contagious disease usually occurring in children, caused by infection with a strain of coxsackievirus and characterized by fever and a blisterlike rash in the mouth and on the hands and feet. The syndrome is caused by various viruses, including several types of coxackievirus — coxsackieviruses A16 (most often), A5, A9, A10, B1 and B3 — and enterovirus 71. These viruses belong to a group called the enteroviruses. This group includes the coxsackieviruses, echoviruses, and polioviruses.
The child died in Linyi city on saturday after he contracted Coxsackie virus, also called “hand, foot, and mouth disease”, which lives in the digestive system and can spread through poor hygiene and faeces, especially in summertime.
Health officials have launched a public education campaign to encourage children to often wash their hands, and urging isolation of infected people.
Diagnosis hand-foot-and-mouth disease is made by most practitioners solely on the basis of the unique appearance of blisters of the mouth, hands, and feet, in a child not appearing very ill.
The illness is characteristically self-limited and is usually over and done within a week, particularly when due to its most common cause: coxsackievirus A16. In those outbreaks due to enterovirus 71, the illness may be more severe with complications such as viral meningitis and encephalitis and paralytic disease. However, Hand-Foot-And-Mouth syndrome, as a rule is, fortunately, mild and self-limited.