Guangdong Province's dengue outbreak worsened
over the weekend climbing from 8 infected to 78, said the
provincial health bureau on Monday.
Five of the cases involved people from Indonesia, Cambodia,
Malaysia and Thailand, but the others affected were all local
residents.
Dengue is a serious infectious disease transmitted by
mosquitoes. It kills 25,000 people and infects more than 100
million each year in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide,
according to China's Ministry of Health.
Since the 1990s, dengue has broken out occasionally in Guangdong
and neighboring Fujian Province, mostly on a small scale.
However, large outbreaks occurred in Fujian in 1999 and in east Zhejiang Province in 2004.
To facilitate the disease's rapid detection and treatment, the
ministry has announced a nationwide monitoring of dengue to gather
details on epidemic conditions and its dissemination patterns.
Sixteen monitoring sites will be set up in the southern
provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, Yunnan, Hainan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.
(Xinhua News Agency August 29, 2006)