¡¡  TOKYO, May 30 (Xinhuanet) -- Japan's Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry asked municipal governments across the country Monday to stop recommending vaccinations for minors against Japanese encephalitis after a case of suspected serious side effects.

    The ministry issued the rare instruction as a female junior high school student in east Japan's Yamanashi Prefecture fell intocritical condition after receiving an inoculation against the disease last year.

    According to the ministry, the student was diagnosed as suffering acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, known as ADEM, a disease causing a nerve disorder, and doctors suspected it was a side effect of the vaccination. The student's symptoms were so serious that she needed respiratory aide.

    The ministry's decision is also based on the fact that the number of Japanese encephalitis patients has been reduced to 10 orless a year, and in some years the number of those reported suffering ADEM and other side effects have outnumbered patients.

    More than 4 million young Japanese annually receive the vaccinations under municipal recommendations.

    Children have been recommended to receive it three times between 6 months and 7-and-a-half years of age. They are then to get another between the ages of 9 and 12, and the last one at the age of 14 or 15.

    ADEM causes brain and spinal cord damage, which brings about headaches, sensory disruption, impaired consciousness and paralysis.

    The ministry has recognized cases of more than 10 people suffering ADEM after receiving Japanese encephalitis inoculations as health hazards linked to the vaccination since 1994.

    As mice brains are used in producing Japanese encephalitis vaccines, some medical experts say tiny amounts of mice brain tissue remaining in the vaccines may have causal link with the side effects.

    Japanese encephalitis is a disease transmitted via mosquitoes that suck pig blood containing the virus. It cannot be transmittedbetween humans.

    One to 0.1 percent of people who contract the virus develop thedisease, and the rate of death among the patients is about 15 percent. Some 45 to 70 percent of survivors are said to suffer complications.

    Tens of thousands of people suffer the disease every year around the world. Enditem