KOZHIKODE: The outbreak of chikungunya has brought into focus the serious threat to public health from a number of other diseases that could become an epidemic.

Besides dengue fever, typhoid and rat fever — which have claimed many lives in recent years — doctors are now seriously worried about the rising incidence of another infection, known as the hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD).

The disease has been diagnosed among children over the last two years in Kozhikode and a few other places in Kerala.

C.K. Sasidharan, former professor, Kozhikode Medical College, and a senior paediatrician, alone has registered over 200 cases since 2005.

He says the tests on blood samples he had sent to the National Institute of Communicable Diseases in Delhi have confirmed the presence of HFMD, a disease that is characterised by eruptions on palm, sole of feet, buttocks, knees and elbows of children.

The patients had responded quickly to treatment when it was first reported in Toronto, Canada. But later it became a worrisome factor for health managers. It became a killer epidemic in Singapore.

Dr. Sasidharan says that in the past two years, the HFMD virus found in Kozhikode and a few other places has become more virulent.

As the disease has been detected mostly among well-water users, doctors say immediate action should be taken to prevent the disease from assuming the proportions of an epidemic, considering that the number of well-water users is very high in the State.

Senior doctors say that serious shortcomings in the State's health management system are visible in the Government's handling of the recent chikungunya outbreak. The Health Department's epidemic cell has remained near-passive. It is not known if any epidemiological studies, needed for proper understanding and management of the disease, are conducted either. Effective precautions against chikungunya were not taken after the disease was reported from Andhra Pradesh and its spread to Bangalore and Mangalore in Karnataka.

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