Posted on 04/26/2003 4:35:20 AM PDT by sarcasm
The SARS virus has crossed a frightening new threshold, making its way into the Chinese countryside, where public-health officials fear it will run riot because of the utter lack of health infrastructure.
Chinese health officials yesterday reported dozens of cases in Qingxu, a rural area about 450 kilometres southwest of Beijing, where dozens more have caught the disease and several have died. Hundreds more cases have been reported just 30 kilometres up the road in the city of Taiyuan, a gritty mining town that could be a launching pad for the disease sweeping through rural areas.
David Heymann, executive director of communicable disease at the World Health Organization, said yesterday that his biggest fear is SARS getting into poor rural areas because the ability to monitor infectious disease is poor and treatment facilities lacking.
If SARS patients are not quarantined, the disease can spread rapidly. The virulent form of pneumonia that it causes requires treatment with oxygen and ventilators, basic medical equipment that is not readily available in rural China. That means the death rate will likely soar.
The Chinese government yesterday established a $2.5-billion (U.S.) fund to help poor farmers and urban residents pay for treatment, to help hospitals in China's poorer regions modernize to deal with the disease and to support SARS research.
But it may well be too little too late. In recent days, the number of suspected SARS cases has risen relentlessly.
Vice-Premier Wu Yi said yesterday that China will "definitely win a complete victory in this battle" over SARS but conceded that the public-health battle is at a critical juncture.
Worldwide, there have 4,640 probable SARS cases in 26 countries, and 274 deaths.
The hardest-hit regions are China and Hong Kong, with 115 deaths each, followed by Canada and Singapore, with 19 deaths each.
Singapore also reported a suspected case of SARS in an 18-month-old toddler, and Hong Kong reported the cases of three SARS-infected mothers whose babies may also have the disease, a troubling development for a disease that, to date, has spared children.
Singaporean lawmakers yesterday adopted harsh new legislation that calls for any suspected SARS patient breaking quarantine to be jailed six months without trial and fined.
The Philippines also announced sweeping new anti-SARS measures, giving the health secretary power to mobilize the military and police to detain suspected SARS carriers. That country has recorded only two deaths — a Canadian nurse and her father — and two other suspected SARS cases.
The only glimmer of good news that has emerged is from Vietnam, which, on Monday, will be declare its outbreak over, after having gone 20 days without a new case.
SARS first surfaced in China's Guangdong province in November but, until recently, health officials remained secretive about the spread of the disease. In recent days, the government has not only been more forthright, it has imposed a number of Draconian measures. These include banning migrant workers and students from returning home from big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, and quarantining entire hospitals using armed guards. At least three hospitals have been sealed off in Beijing. Checkpoints have been set up on roads leaving the capital, and thousands of people have been quarantined.
But, given the country's size and its population of 1.3 billion, such efforts may prove futile.
The SARS outbreak also continues to have dramatic economic consequences. The European Union warned yesterday that the airline industry could suffer net losses of more than $8-billion (U.S.) in 2003. The tourism industry is also being bludgeoned, particularly in Asia and Canada.
Politicians are making symbolic gestures of defiance, in the hope of alleviating fear of the disease, which is far more widespread than the disease itself. French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin flew to Beijing in defiance of the WHO travel advisory and, in Toronto, Ontario Premier Ernie Eves made a symbolic visit to a hospital.
The WHO said yesterday that of the 26 countries that have reported SARS, all but three have contained the disease very well. The exceptions are Canada, China (including Hong Kong) and Singapore.
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