In July 2012, the 54 children infected with enterovirus-71(EV71) were died in Cambodia. The media called it as mystery illness and made Asian parents worried. In fact, the severe epidemics of enterovirus occurred frequently in Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and China. The clinical severity varied from asymptomatic to mild (hand-foot-mouth disease and herpangina) and severe pulmonary edema/hemorrhage and encephalitis. Up to now, the development of vaccine for EV-71 and the more effective antiviral drug was still ongoing. Therefore, surveillance for monitoring the enterovirus activity and understanding the epidemiological characteristics between mild and severe enterovirus cases was crucial.
Objective
This study was to elucidate the spatio-temporal correlations between the mild and severe enterovirus cases through integrating enterovirus-related three surveillance systems in Taiwan. With these fully understanding epidemiological characteristics, hopefully, we can develop better measures and indicators from mild cases to provide early warning signals and thus minimizing subsequent numbers of severe cases.