Risk assessment of public health emergency and concerned infectious diseases in mainland China, May 2014

Objective To assess the risk of public health emergency and communicable diseases concerned in the mainland of China in May 2014. Methods Semi-structured interviews and discussions among subject matter experts based on surveillance data and public healthorganizations bulletins, et al. And provincialCenters for Disease Control and Prevention attended the assessment through remote video conference. Results According to the surveillance data of infectious disease and public health emergency,the occurrence of public health emergency events in May will be higher than April, but it would be lower than the average level of 2011-2013; and the most common event categories may be infectious disease outbreak of hand-foot-mouth disease, mumps, rubella and varicella et al, and following by food poisoning; those events would mostly affect school and other crowded facilities.In May, hand-foot-mouth disease would go up to the epidemic peak; measles will be still at relative high level than the recent 3 years at the same time; more human brucellosis cases would be reported; and human infected with avian influenza A(H7N9) would be at a low level. China is still at risk with imported Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), but the risk is not significant higher than April. The risk of Ebola virus disease(EVD) imported to China is low. Conclusion It is expected that the national public health emergencies in May 2014 would be on the rise; and it is needed to majorly concern hand-foot-mouth disease, generally concern human infection with avian influenza A(H7N9), measles, brucellosis, MERS and EVD.