Hand foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is an acute infectious disease caused by a group of enteroviruses. In 2011, there was a large scale epidemic of HFMD in Viet Nam. This study aims to describe some epidemiology characteristics of the epidemic in the northern region. All HFMD that met the MOH case definition were included in the analysis. The result have shown that 20,529 cases and 3 deaths were recorded. HFMD occurred in all 28 provinces of the northern region. Of those provinces, Hai Phong, Thanh Hoa, Ha Noi, Hoa Binh and Ninh Binh were mostly affected. Cases occurred in several age group but mainly at age less than 5, of which, age from 1-4 have highest incident (82.5 percent). Gender distributionof the disease is 59 percent in male and 41 percent in female. Most of cases were mild (1 and 2a of clinical classification), of which, class 1 is prevalence with 89.5 percent
class 2a account for 9.8 percent
severe clinical class (2b, 3, 4) have very low proportion of less than 1 percent. Pathogen detected include EV7l (41 percent)
CAl6 (5 percent) and CA6 (4 percent)
unclassified intestinal virus account for 50 percent. Since HFMD has just been included in national surveillance system from 2011, it is needed to improve the case/outbreak investigation, do the epidemiology analysis to help the disease prevention in coming future.