Dr. Gursimran Kaur Mohi, Assistant Professor, Department of Virology and the team have bagged the best Award for her original research work on “Hand Foot Mouth Disease” affecting mainly the children in the recent on-going outbreak in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh.

Dr. Gursimran Kaur Mohi, Assistant Professor, Department of Virology and the team have bagged the best Award for her original research work on “Hand Foot Mouth Disease” affecting mainly the children in the recent on-going outbreak in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh. The award was given in National level conference cum Pre conference Workshop on “Emerging Viral infections-challenges and road ahead” organized by The Post Graduate Department of Microbiology, GMCH Srinagar from 10th -12th October 2022, for the work entitled “Hand Foot Mouth Disease – An outbreak investigation from cases in North India( 2022)”.
Hand Foot Mouth Disease (HFMD) is a common febrile illness of early childhood, characterized by 3–4 days of fever and the development of rash on hand, foot, mouth, buttocks. The enterovirus is commonly involved in this disease. The study by Dr. Mohi has highlighted the outbreak investigation of the current outbreak of HFMD in India which started from Kerala spreading to Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Odisha and all the way to North India involving Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh in such a way that the schools resorted to online classes.
The most common age group affected was 1 to 5 years of age and the cases were self-limiting with no mortality. Coxsackie virus A16 was the most common strain of enterovirus found in the study. Though HFMD is self-limiting but complications like pneumonia, meningitis, encephalitis have been observed in various outbreaks in Vietnam (2005) and Taiwan (1998) which necessitates the need of working on the development of a suitable vaccine in near future.