To address the major health issue cause by HFMD, Institut Pasteur of Shanghai (IPS) will launch a large research project on that viral disease that mainly affects children under 5 years.

Coordinated by Pr Ke Lan (Deputy Director in IPS), the project will be conducted in collaboration with the Institut Pasteur (Paris), the Institut Pasteur in Cambodia and Ho Chi Minh City as well as the Department of Pediatric Infectious Diseases from Children’s Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai and the Division of Infectious Disease from Chinese Center for Disease Control (Chinese CDC).

Thanks to the support of the Total Foundation, the Project aims to provide a set of epidemiologic data in the hope of defining strategies for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of severe forms of hand-foot-mouth disease. The project will also study the socio-economic contribution of preventive and therapeutic interventions in the young child.The project will also allow the training of health workers in rural sites to improve the care of children with the disease and training in hospitals of health professionals on research on this disease.

The infection called "hand-foot-mouth" (HFMD) is transmitted by direct contact between infected children and is characterized by fever, mouth sores and blisters on the hands, feet and buttocks. Severe forms of the disease characterized by severe complication due to the dissemination of the disease at neurological, cardiovascular or respiratory levels can cause the death of children. This severe form has been associated with infection by EV71 which outbreak in Cambodia in 2012 killed 52 children in three months. In the first quarter 2015, the WHO has identified more than 150 000 cases including 14 deaths in China. Epidemics are concentrated in Asia in recent years. To date, there is no specific treatment or commercialized vaccine for this disease.

The HFMD project is one of the four new projects supported by the Total Foundation within the Institut Pasteur International Network dedicated to child health. The other projects will address the issues of malnutrition, whooping cough and hepatitis B.

More info on: http://www.pasteur.fr/en/international/partnerships/total-foundation-institut-pasteur

Ke Lan introduce the project on Hand-Foot-Mouth Disease

With the support of the Total Foundation, IPS will launch a large research project to address the major health issue cause by HFMD