In the past decade, countries in the Asia-Pacific region have experienced an increased occurrence of HEV71-associated HFMD outbreaks [10] . HEV71 outbreaks have been reported in Sarawak in 1997, Taiwan in 1998, Perth in 1999, then in Singapore, Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan in 2000 [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] .