News

Children's hospital builds new hand foot and mouth clinic

By Yang Wanli (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-29 09:14
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Beijing Children's Hospital is expanding its clinic area to handle the increasing number of children suffering from hand foot and mouth disease (HFMD), and more doctors will also be arranged, a doctor from the hospital said on Monday. "We are now building another clinic due to the increasing number of HFMD patients," said Hou Xiaoju, a doctor from the hospital.

Children's hospital builds new hand foot and mouth clinic
Patients wait outside the existing overcrowded clinic at Beijing Children's Hospital. [Liu Hang / For China Daily]

Hou said the hospital's HFMD clinic receives about 60 patients every day on average, but that the number had risen fast in the past two months.

"The outpatient numbers can even reach 400 a day sometimes," she said.

The city's biggest children's hospital, the Beijing Children's Hospital, treats nearly 50 percent of the city's non-adult patients.

The hospital received more than 8,000 patients last week - most of the children had a fever and diarrhea or were diagnosed with HFMD - but with the coming of the summer vacation, the hospital expects to receive even more sick children.

From May this year, about 2,000 to 3,000 new HFMD cases were diagnosed in the Beijing Children's Hospital every week. HFMD typically occurs in small epidemics in nursery schools or kindergartens, usually during the summer and autumn months. The normal incubation period is three to seven days.

According to the Beijing health bureau, more than 22,000 children were diagnosed with HFMD as of June 20 this year, a rise of 90 percent compared with the same period last year. More than 200 were severe cases and seven deaths were reported due to the disease.

"If you find your kids have a fever and painful sores appear in the mouth or throat, you should take your kids to hospital as soon as possible. There's no vaccine for the disease in China, so prevention is much more important. Washing hands is a good and basic prevention," said Xi Hui, an official from Beijing health bureau.