Health
China puts nation on alert to try to stop deadly virus
BEIJING : China's Health Ministry issued a nationwide alert Saturday calling for heightened efforts to control a virus that has caused the deaths of 22 children in one city and shows signs of spreading. Health bureaus around the country must step up monitoring for hand, foot and mouth disease following a "relatively large" outbreak in the central city of Fuyang, the Health Ministry said in notices on its Web site.
The ministry warned that cases were more numerous this year than in recent years, and the peak for transmission would likely come in June and July.
The outbreak is another concern for China's communist government as it gears up to welcome hundreds of thousands of foreigners for this summer's Beijing Olympics. It's also an uncomfortable reminder of the SARS pneumonia outbreak in 2003, which Beijing tried to cover up but then adopted drastic measures to control.
Saturday's warning was prompted by a jump in cases in Fuyang of Enterovirus 71, or EV-71, a type of hand, foot and mouth disease.Up to Thursday night, 3,321 cases of EV-71 were reported in Fuyang, a fast-growing city in largely rural Anhui province. Besides the 22 deaths, 978 people remain hospitalized, 58 of them in serious or critical condition, the ministry said in a separate statement.The state-run Xinhua News Agency also reported that preliminary tests showed an 18-month-old boy who died Friday in southeastern Guangdong province was infected with EV-71, and a second suspected death was under investigation. Cases of hand, foot and mouth outbreaks, but not necessarily EV-71, have been reported in at least two other provinces.
"Health bureaus at all levels must recognize the importance and urgency of preventing the spread of infectious diseases," the ministry said in its nationwide order.
Enterovirus 71 is one of several viruses that cause hand, foot and mouth disease, which is characterized by fever, mouth sores and a rash with blisters. It is spread by direct contact with nose and throat discharges, saliva, fluid from blisters, or the stool of infected persons.
The illness mainly strikes children young than 10 and is not related to foot and mouth disease, which infects cattle, sheep and swine.The nationwide order said preventing the spread of infectious diseases was necessary "to guarantee the smooth staging of the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics and to practically preserve social stability."
The order targeted hand, foot and mouth disease, as well as hepatitis A, measles and other infectious diseases commonly spread in the spring and summer.
Mindful of the SARS experience, the order vowed to punish any person or agency who tried to cover-up or delay disclosure of outbreaks.
State media cited the SARS experience in reports this past week that said people in Fuyang had criticized the government's response as slow, allowing rumors to spread about the outbreak.
A press officer with the World Health Organization said representatives were not available for comment on Saturday. The WHO in a statement on Thursday said that while cases in Fuyang cropped up in early March, they increased sharply starting April 19 but a rapid response from China also steeply decreased the rate of fatalities in the second half of April.
With no vaccine or specific therapy developed for EV-71, the WHO recommended better hygiene, with more frequent hand-washing and disinfecting areas — something that it said China was doing.
State-run television footage showed workers spraying disinfectant around houses in rural areas outside Fuyang and medical teams visiting families with small children.
Since the SARS crisis, the government has increased spending on the detection and monitoring of communicable diseases. The Health Ministry has ordered regular reports on outbreaks of hand, foot and mouth diseases and has sent expert teams to Anhui province to lead treatment and prevention.
New hope for 'vegetative' patients
Mother-of-two Christine Simpson is in a coma. Her family was told she could not understand anything going on around her and would die within a few weeks.
But her husband Colin, who lives in Harlow, Essex, was convinced she was aware and was not in a vegetative state.
Thanks to Colin's campaign, Christine now gets specialist care at a centre in Hertfordshire and can communicate "yes" or "no" answers by moving her eyes up or down. He believes there are hundreds or even thousands of such patients who have been wrongly diagnosed but claims he has met resistance from the medical community. "It's now become an inconvenient truth that people in Christine's condition are aware and understand," he says.
His views are being backed by pioneering research from a team in Cambridge. The team, led by Dr Adrian Owen and Dr Martin Coleman, have made breakthroughs in finding ways to communicate with people misdiagnosed as being in a vegetative condition using MRI scans. Neuroscientist Dr Owen was one of the first in the UK to suspect that some people diagnosed as being in a vegetative state could be aware of their surroundings.
Scientist Dr Adrian Owen showed BBC's Colleen Harris scans of her brain
He recalls an early breakthrough case. "I scanned a patient from Addenbrooke's Hospital who was apparently vegetative," he says.
"We showed her pictures of her family and friends and we saw activation in the area of the brain that we know responds to faces.
"When we first saw that this patient was actually consciously aware I was absolutely gobsmacked." What he had discovered was that while some patients described as vegetative were unable to express themselves through movement, their brain patterns showed awareness of their surroundings.
Since then the team has come up with a way to communicate with patients by asking them to imagine playing tennis using their upper arm movements which activates one part of the brain.
Or they will be asked to imagine walking around a house which can activate another part.
The team hope this technique will prevent misdiagnosis of patients as vegetative and also allow rudimentary communication with people who are not even able to move their eyes to indicate a "yes" or a "no".
"It shows us that brain imaging can provide something in addition to clinical or bedside evaluation.
"In this case it told us that a patient that looked vegetative clinically was in fact entirely aware," says Dr Owen. "It's important to stress that this will be a minority of patients, it doesn't mean that all vegetative patients are aware but it does mean that we are now able to detect those that are."
Parts of the brain activate when people think of playing tennis
He adds: "One obvious application of this research is that in future we may be able to adapt the brain imaging techniques to provide a rather rudimentary form of communication in patients that aren't able to communicate in any other way." Mr Simpson, who looks after his wife every day, says: "People such as Christine need to be able to communicate their wishes, their understandings and their feelings. "What they need above all is stimulation, and time of course. "The team at Cambridge have proved beyond doubt that they have far more awareness than they are generally given credit for by the medical community."
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