The number of dengue cases in south China's Guangdong Province has jumped by eight since Friday to 78, said the provincial health bureau on Monday.

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

Dengue is a serious infectious disease transmitted by mosquitoes. It kills 25,000 people and infects more than 100 million each year in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide, according to China's Ministry of Health.

Since the 1990s, dengue has broken out occasionally in Guangdong and neighboring Fujian province, mostly on a small scale. Large outbreaks took place in Fujian in 1999 and in east Zhejiang province in 2004.

The ministry has announced a nationwide monitoring of dengue to gather details of epidemic conditions and analyze dissemination patterns so the disease can be detected rapidly and treated.

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 29, 2006)