There is a risk of a long-term outbreak of hand-foot-mouth disease among some regions in China, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) has warned.

Zhang Jing, a CDCP official in charge of intestinal infection prevention, said incidence rates of the disease was normal compared with other countries.

But he said that the childhood disease had been "obviously spreading" in some regions since mid-March.

The CDCP had been officially monitoring the disease for about a year, but lacked historical figures to gauge whether the epidemic was worse than in previous years, he said.

The outbreak might continue to spread in the next two months since its usual peak season is between May and July, she said.

As of April 15, 25 people had died out of 30.844 cases reported in central Henan province.

In Shandong province, 19 people died out of 17,158 cases reported.

The latest death to be reported was of a 29-month-old boy in a Shanghai hospital on April 16. He was transferred from east China's Anhui province six days after he fell ill.

Zhang stressed that the disease won't be spread throughout the country because it was not transferred through respiratory systems like SARS, measles and other highly-infectious diseases.

Hand-foot-mouth disease is a common childhood illness that mainly affects children under the age of 10. Symptoms include fever, sores in the mouth and a rash with blisters. It can sometimes be fatal.

The CDCP has sent expert teams to provinces including Hunan and Shandong to direct disease prevention work. Labs have been set up in all 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country to research the disease.

Statistics from the Ministry of Health show that this year a total of 50 children died of the disease as of April 7, with 115,000 cases reported.

(Xinhua News Agency April 21, 2009)