SHANGHAI, May 26 (Reuters) - Nearly 100 people, apparently including many children, have been taken to hospital with encephalitis B in southwest China's Yunnan Province, Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.

More than 30 are being treated at Shidian County Hospital in Baoshan, a city in the west of the province close to the Myanmar border, it quoted a hospital source as saying.

The hospital received more than 40 encephalitis B patients last week, Xinhua said, and more patients were in hospital at a clinic in a village of the province.

The provincial health authority has sent an expert panel consisting of top paediatricians to the county, indicating that many of the patients are children, Xinhua said.

Last summer, an outbreak of mosquito-borne encephalitis B -- which inflames the brain -- killed at least 14 people in the central province of Henan and 26 in the northern provinces of Shanxi and neighbouring Shaanxi, according to state media.

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