China hails doctor for raising child virus alarm

BEIJING (Reuters) - A strain of hand, foot and mouth disease has killed four more children in China, bringing the death toll in recent weeks to 34, state media said on Friday, as it praised a doctor who alerted authorities to the epidemic.

An eight-month-old girl and a boy aged one and a half, who both died in southern China, were among the latest victims of an outbreak international experts have warned has yet to peak.

Two more deaths were reported in Bozhou, in the eastern province of Anhui that has been at the centre of the outbreak.

Close to 27,500 cases of the disease have been reported in China as of Friday, an increase of about 2,500 from Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Hand, foot and mouth disease is a common childhood illness, but in the current outbreak it has been linked with enterovirus 71 (EV71) which can cause a severe form of the disease characterised by high fever, paralysis and meningitis.

The girl died early Monday morning in Guangdong province, which has registered four deaths from EV71, Xinhua said.

The boy, from the neighbouring Guangxi region, started running a fever on Saturday but his parents didn't take him to hospital until Tuesday. He became Guangxi's second fatality.

There is no vaccine for the disease, and normally patients recover within a week to 10 days. But cases involving enterovirus 71 usually lead to more severe symptoms.

State media on Friday praised a doctor in Fuyang city in Anhui province who called in experts after she was baffled by the deaths of several children that colleagues insisted were just suffering severe colds or flu.