A total of 94 children have died of the hand-foot-mouth disease (HFMD) this year in China as of Sunday, a spokesman with the Ministry of Health said Wednesday.

More than 192,300 cases were reported in the country from Jan. 1 to April 11 this year, up nearly 40 percent from the same period of last year, among which 2,119 were cases of serious conditions, the ministry's spokesman Deng Haihua told Xinhua in a phone call on Wednesday.

Nearly 80 percent of the cases happened in provinces and regions including Guangdong, Henan, Guangxi, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan and Shandong. Death cases happened in 18 provinces, according to Deng.

Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the worst-hit region, has reported 27 deaths and 17,345 infection cases.

A health check action targeting children under the age of six has been launched in Guangxi's Quanzhou County, in which kindergartens and schools are the priorities, local health bureau said Wednesday.

HFMD has claimed the lives of four children in the county in 2010 as of April 12 while another 10 deaths were very likely caused by the disease, according to the bureau.

"Hospitals are required to report HFMD cases to local disease control center on daily basis," said Yang Jinye, deputy director of Quanzhou Disease Control Center.

Lack of awareness to HFMD early simptoms in rural areas was probably one of the reasons for the outbreak in Quanzhou, said a local disease control expert who was reluctant to tell their name.

The local health bureau has handed out 140,000 flyers introducing basic HFMD knowledge to parents in Quanzhou whose kids are under six years old, said Jiang Xianjian, head of the bureau.

Spring is a period of HFMD outbreak and the situation for the prevention and control of the infectious disease will be serious, experts have warned.

Zhao Minggang, another official with the ministry said earlier on Tuesday that the MOF had started training medical workers to study on a new scheme of HFMD diagnosis and treatment.

Clinical doctors, nurses, public health workers and health educators nationwide were all on the list of the training program, Zhao said.

The new scheme learns from international advanced diagnosis methods and lays equal stress on Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine, according to Zhao.

HFMD is a common illness that mainly affects children under the age of 10. It usually starts with a slight fever followed by blisters and ulcers in the mouth and rashes on the hands and feet. It is spread through contact with saliva or feces of the infected.

The HFMD infection normally lasts seven to ten days but may be fatal in severe cases.

Good personal hygiene, including washing hands often, is strongly recommended to prevent the disease.

(Xinhua News Agency April 15, 2010)