Schools Reopen Amid HFMD Outbreak In Thailand

BANGKOK, July 24 (Bernama) -- Although there are now patients of the hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) throughout all regions in the country, the disease has been contained with many schools reopening after being closed last week, Thai News Agency reported.

Thai Permanent Secretary for Public Health Dr. Paijit Warachit said on Monday that the HFMD should "fade out" over the next six weeks although there were HFMD patients in all regions.

Chulalongkorn University Demonstration School in Bangkok has reopened after being closed from July 16 to 20, but doctors had been ordered to conduct check ups on students for signs of HFMD until July 27.

In Chiang Mai Province in the Thai North, four children at a nursery in San Kamphaeng District were reported to have contraced the disease. The nursery has been closed for cleanup for a week.

Sisaket Kindergarten in the Thai Northeast that borders Cambodia has also reopened after it was closed on July 19 following reports of five children being infected by HFMD.

Meanwhile, an official laboratory test has concluded that a two-year-old girl who died at Nopparat Rajathanee Hospital in Bangkok last Thursday had enterovirus 71, which causes the HFMD.

However, doctors have said this does not necessarily mean that the girl had died from HFMD.

According to them, some 90 per cent of HFMD patients would usually die from the disease while the rest will succumb to brain and heart inflammation.

-- BERNAMA