East China's Anhui Province has installed a province-wide daily reporting system to monitor infection of a lethal virus that has killed 19 children in its Fuyang City.

Enterovirus 71 can cause hand, foot and mouth disease which usually starts with a slight fever followed by blisters of ulcers in the mouth and on the hands and feet.

Infections could lead to high mortalities in serious cases and neither vaccine nor therapeutic treatment is available.

The provincial health department has also decided to host workshops to train more medical workers for prevention and cure of the deadly intestinal virus now rampant in Fuyang.

Hospitals in Fuyang, in northwest Anhui, started to take in children with fever, along with blisters, ulcers in the mouth, or rashes on the hands and feet, in early March. Some of the victims were diagnosed with brain, heart and lung damage.

All of the victims were aged below six. The majority of them were children under the age of two.

By Saturday, there were 789 cases of infections including 19 deaths. A total of 204 children remain in hospital. Four of them are said to be in critical conditions.

(Xinhua News Agency April 28, 2008)