South China's Guangdong Province has reported 70 cases of dengue fever this year, the provincial department of health announced Saturday.

Five cases concerned people from Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand, and the rest were all local residents, the department said.

Dengue fever is a serious infectious disease in tropical and subtropical regions. It kills 25,000 people and infects more than 100 million people worldwide each year.

Since the 1990s, dengue fever has broken out occasionally in Guangdong and southeastern Fujian Province, mostly on a small scale. Large breakouts took place in Fujian in 1999 and in Zhejiang Province in 2004.

Just a week ago, the Chinese Ministry of Health announced that it would start nationwide monitoring of dengue fever.

The aim of the move is to gather evidence on epidemic conditions and analyze disease dissemination patterns so that the disease can be detected rapidly and treated, the ministry said.

Sixteen monitoring sites will be set up in the southern provinces of Guangdong, Fujian, Yunnan, Hainan and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

(Xinhua News Agency August 28, 2006)