While Beijing doctors are busy treating patients with flu and
colds, hospitals in Guangzhou, capital of south China's Guangdong Province, are seeing a rise in the
number of patients with diarrhea.
The number of patients diagnosed with gastroenteritis has
increased by 20 percent over the same period last year, said Lu
Jianhua, director of the emergency department in the city's First
People's Hospital.
Similar increment is also found in other Guangzhou-based
hospitals, including the Red Cross Hospital, the People's Hospital
and the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical College.
The phenomenon has caused some to worry over a possible outbreak
of norovirus, which has infected over 60,000 people in Japan, but
doctors say the phenomenon is not unusual, and the number of
gastroenteritis patients usually rises at this time of year.
"Most patients are infected by rotavirus, and the virus has
taken advantage of the warm weather in the past few days," said
LiZengqing, a pediatrician in Guangzhou People's Hospital.
Local disease prevention officials said the cases are not
connected, and they have not registered any massive outbreak of
gastro-viral infections.
"The patients may have been infected after dining in restaurants
with poor sanitation, or have eaten undercooked hot-pot food, which
is local people's favorite dish in winter," said Wang Zhengwei, a
doctor in the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical
College.
Doctors have advised local residents not to eat raw or
undercooked foods and refrain from eating too much in the holiday
season.
(Xinhua News Agency January 11, 2007)