Another 344 had been hospitalized. Of the fatalities, three in four involved children under two. Health officials are struggling to determine why the Sarawak strain is so dangerous to pre-schoolers and what can be done to stop it claiming more victims. There are six different sub-types of Coxsackie B, a virus named after the town in New York state in which it was discovered in 1948. It is also called hand, foot and mouth disease because of the red spots that appear on the soles, palms and mouths of victims.
Sufferers also experience high fever and nausea.
Usually, the symptoms are at first so similar to those of chicken pox that parents simply wait for them to disappear without consulting a physician. This probably led to the first deaths in the timber town of Sibu mid-April. Now parents are being urged to take their children to hospital the moment any symptoms appear. This particular strain of Coxsackie B causes myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart. It is not known why the virus specifically attacks the heart muscle or why young children are particularly at risk of serious infection.