China has its first non-imported dengue outbreak in a decade

by Michael Woodhead
Last year, Yunnan experienced an explosive outbreak of  dengue fever spread by mosquitoes.

This was a strange and worrying phenomenon because Yunnan has been dengue free for many years. China has had a few outbreaks of dengue in recent years but they tend to have been in south eastern provinces such as Guangdong, and they are usually related to imported dengue fever. The infection is not endemic to Yunnan.

However, in 2013 health workers in Xishuangbanna had to deal with a huge outbreak of this often severe, life-threatening disease. There were 1245 cases of which 136 patients were hospitalised and 70 were classified as severe cases. The symptoms included severe haemorrhage (including massive vaginal and gastrointestinal bleeding), severe plasma leakage (such as pleural effusion, ascites, or hypoproteinaemia), and organ failure. Twenty of the cases  deteriorated to shock.

In an analysis of the outbreak published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, Dr Zhang Fuchun of the Guangzhou 8th People's Hospital say the dengue fever was caused by a new virulent strain of the virus known as serotype 3 (DENV-3). But the main reason for the severity of the outbreak was that the infection was spread  more rapidly by a different type of mosquito - Aedes. aegypti. The usual type of mosquito seen in Yunnan is known as Aedes albopictus, and dengue caused by this species tends to be milder and short lived. The researchers say the 'double whammy' of a new strain of dengue and a new strain of mosquito combined to "carries a high risk for a severe epidemic and endemicity" in an area that was until recently dengue free.

Tropical diseases in China: one down, ten to go

by Michael Woodhead
China has eliminated one tropical disease - lymphatic filiarisis - but has ten others that are still affecting millions of people and some of which are becoming endemic again, according to a new report.
The good news from a review of China's tropical diseases published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases is that the country is on track to eradicate five major diseases (schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, leprosy, rabies and trachoma) in the next five to ten years.  However, the not-so-good news is that some diseases are still uncontrolled and affect millions of people in poorer provinces of the south and west. The most problematic diseases are dengue fever, food-borne parasitic diseases such as liver flukes and Echinococcosis, according to the article by researchers at the Wuxi branch of the Ministry of Health. Professor Yang Guo Jing and colleagues from the Key Laboratory for Parasitic Diseases say that lymphatic filiarisis was eliminated from China in 2007 after a long campaign to remove it from 16 provinces by using mass drug administration techniques.
Tropical diseases in the 'near-elimination' stage include schistosomiasis, which has been successfully controlled in most parts of the country and numbers reduced from 12 million to 287,000 in 2011. The disease is spread by cattle and water buffalo, and thus changes in farming techniques are needed to help eliminate the disease. Similar improvements in control have been seen for leishmaniasis, the sandfly-spread protozoal infection which used to be common around the Yangtze river basin but now affects only about 2500 people a year. The bacterial infection trachoma that causes blindness is also close to elimination due to implementation of mass campaigns that apply WHO strategies such as facial cleanliness. Rabies has also been controlled, but still causes 2000-3000 cases a year. Immunisation of 70% of dogs at risk should break the cycle of infection, but currently only about 20% are vaccinated. Leprosy was reported to affect about 6000 people in China in 2010, of which about 1300 were new cases. Better surveillance and multi-drug treatment regimens should help eradicate the infection by 2020, the report suggests.
China has has less success with soil-transmitted helminthiasis, and there are about 85 million Chinese affected by roundworm and whipworm. De-worming of schoolchildren seems to have only modest efficacy, and so new strategies such as curbs on the use of human waste as fertiliser are needed, the report says.
The most problematic tropical diseases for China include dengue fever, with outbreaks of the mosquito-borne infection rapidly emerging as a major public health problem. Climate change is worsening the problem, which requires better monitoring and mosquito management strategies as there is no drug or vaccine for the disease.
Another major problem tropical disease for China are the food-borne parasitic zoonoses, such as liver flukes, lung flukes, and other trematodes that may be transmitted by fish, snails and freshwater plants. There are tens of millions of cases in China, which has the dubious honour of having 80% of the 15 million cases globally. New programs are needed to identify high risk disease areas and to address transmission of infection through occupational risk (eg farmers) and also consumption of high risk foods.
Control of these many tropical diseases will require huge  resources to build and design  programs specific for each disease and the high risk locations and populations they affect, the authors conclude.

Chinese returning from Sudan to be screened for yellow fever

Chinese workers returning from Sudan will be screened for yellow fever

In a move that underlines how many Chinese citizens now work in Africa, China’s quarantine officials recently urged greater efforts to make sure that a yellow fever epidemic now raging in Sudan does not come back to China.
Local health authorities were asked to scan all travelers arriving from Sudan for fevers. Chinese citizens planning travel to Sudan were advised to get yellow fever shots. Customs officers were told that containers arriving from Sudan might have stray infected mosquitoes inside.
Sudan’s epidemic is considered the world’s worst in 20 years. Sweden, Britain and other donors have paid for vaccinations. The United States Navy’s laboratory in Egypt has helped with diagnoses.
Estimates of the number of Chinese working in Africa, many in the oil and mining industries or on major construction projects, range from 500,000 to 1 million. Experts on AIDS have previously warned that the workers could become a new means of bringing that disease to China, which has a low H.I.V.-infection rate.
ProMED-mail, a Web site that follows emerging diseases, has tracked reports about the Sudan outbreak, with its moderators adding valuable context. China’s mosquito-killing winters make a large yellow fever outbreak there unlikely, moderators said. But Sudan’s containment efforts are troubled. For example, vaccinated people cannot get cards proving they have had shots, but the cards are reported to be for sale at police checkpoints.
Source: NYT