Our laboratory received 4290 specimens from 2950 children from March 1998 through June 2005, with a male to female ratio of 1.35:1. The histogram in the top panel of Figure 1 shows the distribution of HFMD cases seen in our sentinel clinics during this period. There have clearly been two large outbreaks of HFMD in 2000 and 2003 (bottom panel of Figure 1 ), with some sporadic activity between these peaks. The dominant enterovirus serotype isolated during both the outbreaks was HEV71 as shown in the middle panel of Figure 1 . CVA16 was always isolated during HEV71 outbreaks as well but was also isolated in interoutbreak periods. Other species A human enteroviruses such as CVA2, CVA4, CVA5, CVA10 and CVA12 were also isolated in inter-outbreak periods.