Four diagnosed with skin anthrax infection

Four people diagnosed with cutaneous anthrax infections in Northeast China's Liaoning Province are not in critical condition, health officials said on Wednesday.

Three more people are showing symptoms of the disease, but they are yet to be diagnosed, said Yan Hong, a press official with the Liaoning Department of Health.

"All the patients are under treatment and there are no critical cases," she said. Yan added that no other cases of the disease have been found.

Cutaneous, or skin, anthrax infections are the least serious form of the disease. The disease is usually contracted when a person with a cut or a sore on his or her skin comes into direct, unprotected contact with anthrax spores on a sick or dead animal.

Of the seven cases, three occurred in Liaozhong County in the provincial capital of Shenyang.

Local health authorities have quarantined a village in the Xiaozhaimen Township of the county, banning any livestock or meat products from entering or leaving the village.

People who go into and out of the village are being quarantined, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Three cows were found to be infected with anthrax in the village on Monday, according to the province's Bureau of Animal Health and Production.

"The infected cows and the other 80 cows in the same area have been destroyed. No infected beef has entered the market," said the bureau in a statement.

Similar cases

The anthrax cases in Liaoning came about two weeks after similar cases in Jiangsu Province.

Seven villagers got swollen skin and ulcers after they butchered a cow in Lianyungang city on July 25.

The butchered animal, together with some other cows in the area, are said to have come from another province.

Two of the seven people were diagnosed with the anthrax infections on Aug 3. The seven people were taken into a local hospital for treatment.

Bao Changjun, deputy head of the acute epidemics prevention center of the Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Prevention and Control, said on Wednesday that no new anthrax cases had been reported in the province.

According to him, the province sent medical experts to take samples of the villagers and diagnose the disease. In addition to quarantining the seven people, local health authorities sterilized their homes and all the places they had been to.

"All the other people who butchered the cow have passed the longest incubation period of two weeks," he said.

"The patients' symptoms are light. Human skin anthrax can usually be cured if it's diagnosed in time and medicated with antibiotics," said Bao.

He added that the last anthrax case in the province happened in 1998, when floods exposed bacillus anthracis, the bacteria that causes the disease, in the soil and infected cows.

The patients' conditions are "very stable" now, he said. "They will get out of the hospital after the scabs on their skin fall off."

An expert in epidemic monitoring at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention who declined to be named said that there are several hundred cases of anthrax reported every year around the country. Areas such as Northeast China, Sichuan province and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region have reported anthrax cases recently.

"Farmers and herdsmen are more prone to the disease," the expert said. "And areas with a developed stockbreeding industry have higher rates of the disease."

She said that sick cattle transported from other areas are to blame for the recent cases in both Jiangsu and Liaoning provinces.

"This shows that there is a problem with the management of sick cattle. Local sick cattle should not be sold to other places."