China's top health authorities admitted on Friday they still did not have the exact number of patients suffering from the disease from tick bites.

By Friday, the infection recognized as human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA), had reportedly spread to 12 provinces including Henan and Shandong, causing at least 31 deaths.

Medical experts from the Ministry of Health and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention diagnose a patient who is suspected of suffering human granulocytic anaplasmosis contracted by a tick bite, in a hospital in Shangcheng County of Henan Province, on Friday. [China Daily]

"So far we have no details on the general epidemic situation across the country," said Deng Haihua, spokesman of the ministry.

Information about the exact epidemic situation in each affected province should be available from the local surveillance and reporting system of infectious diseases, he said.

After detecting the first HGA case in Anhui province in 2006, the ministry issued a guideline on HGA prevention and control in 2008, which stipulates that local health authorities report suspected cases within 24 hours upon detection.

However, many tended to ignore this order, as HGA was not listed among the nearly 40 infectious diseases required by law to be reported, experts said.

Only after the Beijing News broke a story early this week about the outbreak in Xinyang, Henan province, did the provincial health authority on Wednesday make the outbreaks public - 557 reported cases including 18 deaths.

Health authorities of Shandong Province also announced on Friday that 182 HGA cases, including 13 deaths, had been detected locally since May 2008.

By Friday, they were the only two to have publicized occurrences of HGA.

Under current law on infectious disease prevention and control, local health administrations are required to publicize local epidemics.

But the ministry is still pushing local health authorities to make timely reports of public health concerns, particularly public health emergencies and outbreaks, Deng said.

"We still have a long way to go in that regard," he said.

But he also dismissed criticism that the HGA outbreaks were deliberately covered up and not made public, citing the complexity of publicizing an unknown disease.

Vivian Tan, spokeswoman for the WHO Beijing Office, told China Daily on Friday that they had officially requested more information from the Ministry of Health, and the WHO is willing to offer technical assistance if requested.

"So far there has been no such request. We are standing by to help as required," she said.

Chinese experts are yet to determine the type of pathogen carried by ticks, Li Dexin, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the Friday conference.

Most of the patients suffering from tick-borne pathogens had fevers and low blood cell counts. Some of the patients died of intestinal complications.

Now, the center has temporarily named the disease "fever-thrombocytopenia syndrome," but many kinds of pathogens are likely to cause the syndrome, said Li. Ticks can carry 83 kinds of viruses and 14 kinds of bacteria, he added.

(China Daily September 11, 2010)