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Home » Opinion » Chinese Views
Rural, migrant kids most likely to get sick
Source: Xinhua |
April 27, 2010, Tuesday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
RECENT outbreaks of hand, foot, and mouth disease in China have highlighted poor health care in the country's rural areas - the weak link in the health care system.
HFMD is not a highly contagious disease, but deaths resulting from it have surged this year.
Forty children died from the disease in March alone, double the total of the first three months last year, according to the Ministry of Health (MOH).
Altogether 192,344 cases had been reported this year as of April 12, up 38 percent from a year earlier, including 94 death cases.
HFMD typically strikes infants and children under the age of five in spring and autumn.
Normally it runs its course in seven to 10 days. In a few cases, however, infection can lead to high fever, meningitis, encephalitis, pulmonary edema and paralysis, which can be fatal.
It usually starts with a slight fever followed by blisters and ulcers in the mouth and rashes on the hands and feet.
It is spread through contact with saliva or feces of those who are infected.
The disease started to cause alarm in 2008 when it killed 22 children in central China's Anhui Province from March to May. Despite the government's increasing efforts to curb outbreaks, deaths from HFMD have continued to rise. In 2009, 353 children died from the disease, up from 126 in 2008. The number of HFMD cases in 2009 was 1.15 million, up from 480,000 year on year, according to MOH.
Statistics showed rural areas and urban fringe zones were the worst-hit regions, which experts said was due to poor hygiene and medical care as well as low health awareness in those regions.
HFMD infections were reported in both cities and rural areas; however, "Most of the more than 2,100 severe cases and deaths reported so far have happened in rural areas," said Feng Zijian, director of the emergency response department of the Center for Disease Prevention and Control of China.
Quanzhou County, a badly hit area in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, reported 14 child deaths from infectious diseases this year as of April 12, among which four were confirmed HFMD cases and the other 10 were strongly suspected to have contracted the disease. All of the 14 children were from villages.
"Most of the 1,200 rural doctors in Quanzhou County have only nursing training while some just received a short medical training course after finishing high school," said Wang Zhongyun, president of the Quanzhou Renmin Hospital.
The HFMD outbreaks exposed the incompetence of rural health care practitioners in dealing with medical emergencies and infectious disease.
By the time the sick children were rushed to county hospitals, the epidemic had already started to spread, and the best time for treatment had passed, according to Wang Qun, head of the outpatient department of the hospital affiliated to Guilin Medical University.
Wang called on the government to strengthen training for rural medical staff. "Rural medical staff are the nerve endings of China's disease prevention and control system. We have to make the endings acute to nip infectious diseases in the bud," he said.
Besides medical staff, experts are also calling on government to install more medical equipment in village clinics and hospitals. Only one respirator was available in the whole of Quanzhou County when the disease broke out, and the shortage severely hampered doctors' efforts to save lives.
Experts said outbreaks of HFMD were also related to China's rapid urbanization as urban fringe zones, where many migrants live, have been hard-hit by the disease.
China has seen a leap in urbanization in the past half century, with urban population increasing to 46 percent of the country's total from the 7 percent in 1949. The fast pace of urbanization has increased environmental degradation and pollution, which poses a severe threat to people's health, especially in migrant suburbs with poor access to local health care.
Four of the HFMD deaths reported this year in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, were all from suburban migrant families, said Wang Bo, vice director of the province's HFMD expert panel.
Dongguan has the largest floating population in the province, as the city's pillar of manufacturing has has absorbed masses of migrants.
A survey showed that from January 2008 to the middle of 2009, HFMD cases from the three urban fringe zones accounted for 78 percent of the city's total.
"Poor living conditions and hygiene, low economic status and substandard nutrition among kids are the reasons for the outbreak in urban fringe zones," said Wang Quanyi, an official with the Beijing Disease Control Center.
Migrant parents usually do not pay enough attention to their children as they are too busy earning money to support the family, so they are unlikely to pickup early symptoms of some diseases, said Wang.
A survey among residents in urban fringe zones conducted by Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine shows that 83.7 percent of those surveyed have never considered having health checkups.
HFMD is not a highly contagious disease, but deaths resulting from it have surged this year.
Forty children died from the disease in March alone, double the total of the first three months last year, according to the Ministry of Health (MOH).
Altogether 192,344 cases had been reported this year as of April 12, up 38 percent from a year earlier, including 94 death cases.
HFMD typically strikes infants and children under the age of five in spring and autumn.
Normally it runs its course in seven to 10 days. In a few cases, however, infection can lead to high fever, meningitis, encephalitis, pulmonary edema and paralysis, which can be fatal.
It usually starts with a slight fever followed by blisters and ulcers in the mouth and rashes on the hands and feet.
It is spread through contact with saliva or feces of those who are infected.
The disease started to cause alarm in 2008 when it killed 22 children in central China's Anhui Province from March to May. Despite the government's increasing efforts to curb outbreaks, deaths from HFMD have continued to rise. In 2009, 353 children died from the disease, up from 126 in 2008. The number of HFMD cases in 2009 was 1.15 million, up from 480,000 year on year, according to MOH.
Statistics showed rural areas and urban fringe zones were the worst-hit regions, which experts said was due to poor hygiene and medical care as well as low health awareness in those regions.
HFMD infections were reported in both cities and rural areas; however, "Most of the more than 2,100 severe cases and deaths reported so far have happened in rural areas," said Feng Zijian, director of the emergency response department of the Center for Disease Prevention and Control of China.
Quanzhou County, a badly hit area in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, reported 14 child deaths from infectious diseases this year as of April 12, among which four were confirmed HFMD cases and the other 10 were strongly suspected to have contracted the disease. All of the 14 children were from villages.
"Most of the 1,200 rural doctors in Quanzhou County have only nursing training while some just received a short medical training course after finishing high school," said Wang Zhongyun, president of the Quanzhou Renmin Hospital.
The HFMD outbreaks exposed the incompetence of rural health care practitioners in dealing with medical emergencies and infectious disease.
By the time the sick children were rushed to county hospitals, the epidemic had already started to spread, and the best time for treatment had passed, according to Wang Qun, head of the outpatient department of the hospital affiliated to Guilin Medical University.
Wang called on the government to strengthen training for rural medical staff. "Rural medical staff are the nerve endings of China's disease prevention and control system. We have to make the endings acute to nip infectious diseases in the bud," he said.
Besides medical staff, experts are also calling on government to install more medical equipment in village clinics and hospitals. Only one respirator was available in the whole of Quanzhou County when the disease broke out, and the shortage severely hampered doctors' efforts to save lives.
Experts said outbreaks of HFMD were also related to China's rapid urbanization as urban fringe zones, where many migrants live, have been hard-hit by the disease.
China has seen a leap in urbanization in the past half century, with urban population increasing to 46 percent of the country's total from the 7 percent in 1949. The fast pace of urbanization has increased environmental degradation and pollution, which poses a severe threat to people's health, especially in migrant suburbs with poor access to local health care.
Four of the HFMD deaths reported this year in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, were all from suburban migrant families, said Wang Bo, vice director of the province's HFMD expert panel.
Dongguan has the largest floating population in the province, as the city's pillar of manufacturing has has absorbed masses of migrants.
A survey showed that from January 2008 to the middle of 2009, HFMD cases from the three urban fringe zones accounted for 78 percent of the city's total.
"Poor living conditions and hygiene, low economic status and substandard nutrition among kids are the reasons for the outbreak in urban fringe zones," said Wang Quanyi, an official with the Beijing Disease Control Center.
Migrant parents usually do not pay enough attention to their children as they are too busy earning money to support the family, so they are unlikely to pickup early symptoms of some diseases, said Wang.
A survey among residents in urban fringe zones conducted by Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine shows that 83.7 percent of those surveyed have never considered having health checkups.
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