>>Asian countries save face, battle SARS
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - In the wake of a rapidly spreading killer disease, two East Asian countries of contrasting size are revealing how fast they are holding on to features that nations here are known for - saving face, and wearing a calm exterior to hide turmoil within.
The smallest of them, the efficient city-state of Singapore, is doing exactly what the doctor ordered. No sooner had the early signs of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) been detected, when it launched a well-publicized effort to combat the spread of the new disease.
The tough measures taken by the Singapore authorities ranging from shutting down all schools to ordering the more than 800 people who have had contact with SARS patients into quarantine - affirmed a willingness to drop the tendency of going into denial to "save face".
Since SARS was first detected in Singapore last month, at least 95 people have been diagnosed with the disease and four people have died because of it, said the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO).
In Singapore, those people ill with SARS, described as an atypical pneumonia whose actual origin remains unknown, were infected through local chains of transmission, added the United Nations health agency.
By contrast, the larger of the two nations, China, has in many ways held on to the values that Singapore abandoned to face the deadly virus head-on.
Beijing's authorities opted to limit the flow of information on the spread of SARS, despite China being, according to WHO experts, the likely source of the virus and the worst hit by the disease.
As of this week, there are at least 1,190 cases of SARS that have been diagnosed in China and 46 people have died from the disease, says the WHO. The worst-affected region is its southeastern province of Guangdong, which has had 1,153 cases and from where, the WHO noted, the disease most likely originated.
Cases have also been reported in the capital Beijing, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and Hunan, Shanxi and Sichuan provinces.
On Thursday, after WHO warned travelers about visiting Guangdong and the neighboring Hong Kong Special Administrative Region due to the spread of SARS, Chinese Health Minister Dr Zhang Wenkang told the press that Beijing had the disease under control.
"The exact pathogen of SARS is still unknown and global cooperation is needed for successfully handling this disease," he said, adding that it remains safe for travelers to go China and patients were getting well.
In fact, Beijing's recalcitrance to be open about SARS, after global attention was directed toward China as the possible source of the disease, was reflected when it did not grant ready permission to a WHO team of investigators to visit Guangdong.
The WHO scientists finally arrived in Guangdong on Thursday, but the spokesman for the team, Chris Powell, said that the group could be in "for a long haul" in the search for the source of the virus.
Across East Asia, where places such as Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam have been named by the WHO as having SARS patients, countries are quickly realizing the virtues of the Singapore model in disease prevention as opposed to China's.
Thailand, for instance, went from an initial denial mode - even demanding that the UN health agency strike its name off a list of 18 countries with SARS - to a tough prevention program last week.
Among others, the Thai government has threatened people who have been to high-risk countries such as Singapore or China to be quarantined for 14 days or face a six-month jail sentence and monetary fines.
Passengers arriving from high-risk countries have to field a battery of questions from health officials at the airport. Thailand's national airline is handing out masks to passengers as they board planes.
Thailand has seven patients with SARS and there have been two deaths from the disease, stated WHO, adding that the country has no sign of the disease being transmitted locally, as in Hong Kong or China.
The first death in Thailand was that of Dr Carlo Urbani, the WHO infectious-disease specialist who first identified the virus in Vietnam. Before he fell sick about four weeks ago in Thailand, Urbani had been treating a SARS patient in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi.
Ever since, Thailand has been on the WHO's risk list of countries infected with SARS. "I think we can have a small epidemic after Songkran," said Dr Bjorn Melgaard, the WHO representative in Thailand, referring to the country's new year, which falls in mid-April and is celebrated, among other ways, by people dousing each other with buckets of water.
Public health officials are contemplating a course of preventive action they may have to pursue for Songkran, since the festival is expected to attract home thousands of Thai workers from Singapore and Hong Kong, where 706 SARS cases and 16 SARS-related deaths have been recorded.
"We cannot bar them from coming [home]," said Supamit Chunsuttiwat of the Department of Communicable Disease Control. "Songkran is so big a festival for Thai people."
Meantime, health experts continue to be troubled by rapid spread of SARS across the world.
Since early March, when the WHO issued a global warning about the new disease, there have been at least 2,416 SARS cases recorded in countries as far afield as Canada, Germany and Britain and at least 89 SARS-related deaths.
According to the WHO, the first case of SARS was reported on February 26, when a man was admitted to a hospital in Hanoi with a high fever, cough and mild sore throat.
"Over the next four days he developed increasing breathing difficulties, severe thrombocytopenia [low platelet count] and signs of adult respiratory distress syndrome requiring ventilator support," WHO said.
But the disease's beginnings in China go back by more than three months. WHO is investigating reports that the first outbreak of an unusual pneumonia in Guangdong occurred last November, something the Chinese government has concealed from the international health community.
(Inter Press Service)<<
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