Many schools reopen, HFMD under control

BANGKOK, July 24 (TNA) - Although there are now patients of the hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) in Thailand's all regions, the disease has been contained and many schools have reopened after their closure last week. 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 are HFMD patients in all Thai regions. Regarding to affected schools, Chulalongkorn University Demonstration School in Bangkok, for instance, has reopened after its temporary closure from July 16-20, but the school director has doctors to check up his students for signs of the HFMD, with the checkup to be continued until July 27. In Chiang Mai Province in the Thai North, about four more children at a nursery in San Kamphaeng District were found to contract the HFMD and the place has been closed for seven days for a cleanup. Sisaket Kindergarten in the Thai Northeast, bordering neighbouring Cambodia, has also reopend, after it was closed on July 19 when there were five children reported with the HFMD. Meanwhile, an official laboratory test has concluded that a two-year-old girl who died at Nopparat Rajathanee Hospital in Bangkok on July 19 had enterovirus 71, which causes the HFMD. However, doctors said it does not necessarily mean that the girl died from the HFMD, explaining that some 90 per cent of HFMD patients normally die from the disease and the rest 10 per cent die from brain and heart inflammation. (TNA)