Foot and mouth epidemic outbreaks in Taiwan

Taiwanese was alerted and panic with the news about the outbreak of the mouth-and-foot disease epidemic 口啼疫 in the hog farms of Chang-Hua 彰化 and Yun-Lin 雲林 counties on February 18. In 1997 when the epidemic ran rampant in Taiwan, Taiwanese had slaughtered approximately 3.8 million hogs and literally shut down a profitable hog-meat export business. This time, the authority said that they had slaughtered 677 hogs and had "contained" the disease.

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) or hoof-and-mouth disease (Aphtae epizooticae) is a highly contagious and sometimes fatal viral disease for animals like hogs, cattle, water buffalo, sheep and goats.. It is caused by virus. On rare but definite conditions, the virus can transmit to human through contacts. It has been recorded that the disease had killed two children in England in 1884.

Shall Taiwanese relax because the authority had claimed the situation is "under-control"? We just have wait and see. Both mouth-and-foot disease and bird flue virus disease are originated from China. Taiwanese has many good reasons to be alerted because of increased contacts between Taiwanese and Chinese under the new administration policy.