Geographic epidemiological characteristics of repeated hand foot mouth disease infections in China

Objective To analyze epidemical characteristics of repeated hand foot mouth disease(HFMD)infections in China.Methods The repeated HFMD incidences were collected from National Disease Surveillance and Report System.The thematic map of the disease distribution was created with GIS software Results There were more than 700 000 cases of HFMD and 798(about 0.1% of the total cases)repeated infections occurred in China from May 2008 to may 2009.The thematic map showed that most of the repeated HFMD infections occurred in the southern China,especially in Guangdong,Guangxi and etc.,where different pathogens were involved in the disease.The repeated infections happened more frequently in male children than in females and 77.8% of the infections occurred in children below 3 years old.Conclusion The GIS method is helpful in understanding geographic distribution and other related characteristics of repeated HFMD infections.