Abstract: Objective To systematically analyse the epidemiological characteristics of hand,foot and mouth disease(HFMD)in Fujian province from 2008 to 2012 and to provide a basis for prevention and control of the disease.Methods Descriptive and analytic statistics were used and non-integer sequence rank sum ratio was used to evaluate the effect of prevention and control measures.Results From 2008 to 2012,there were 256 333 cases of HFMD reported.The accumulative morbidity was 694.78 per 100 000 and the accumulative mortality was 0.21 per 100 000.There were 95.78% of the cases being the children of ≤5 years old.,with an accumulative specific incidence rate of 10 229.78 per 100 000 and an accumulative specific death rate of 3.21 per 100 000.The durations from April to June and from September to October were two prevalent peak seasons.The highest proportion of incidences was observed in Quanzhou city(24.32%)and the highest accumulative incidence rate was observed in Fuzhou city.The effects of comprehensive prevention and control were better in Quanzhou,Putian,and Sanming municipality than in other cities.The odds ratios of severe cases and death cases were 1.45 times and 2.04 times higher in rural areas than in the urban areas.The children aged 1 to 2 years had the highest morbidity and mortality than other residents.About 52.11% of the severe cases and 89.61% of the death cases were related to the infection of EV71.Conclusion HFMD epidemic increases yearly and is of unique characteristics and some counties with low morbidity should be concerned to the change of prevalent strain to prevent the outbreak of HFMD in Fujian province.