Posted on 04/27/2003 9:46:58 AM PDT by Dog Gone
IF a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrom epidemic breaks out in the Philippines, the man to blame is (in case the people want to lynch somebody--aside from Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit) Tourism Secretary Dick Gordon. The talkative Gordon has been quoted in the newspapers and shown on television as against a temporary ban on travelers from SARS-infected countries like China. The reason: it would reduce tourist arrivals in the Philippines and therefore he wouldn't have the numbers to boast of during the senatorial election campaign.
He is the only Cabinet member, he would probably like to gloat, who racked up an improvement in his department despite the economic crisis because of SARS, and therefore the people should elevate him to the Senate. In fact, he seems to be happy that there is a SARS epidemic in China, Hong Kong and Singapore because tourists are coming here instead.
While Singapore "incurred a sharp 58 percent decline in its tourism income, and Hong Kong where the airline Cathay Pacific experienced a 55 percent grounding of its fleet.... the Philippines attained a 2 percent rise in tourist arrivals during the entire quarter," Gordon boasted in Sunday's Inquirer.
When SARS broke out in these and other countries, Gordon had announced to the world: "Come to the Philippines; it's SARS-free."
But as I warned in the April 2 column, it won't be for long. And true enough, we are no longer SARS-free. We now have at least four confirmed cases, with two deaths. Watch the tourist arrivals decline rapidly.
All because the presidential anti-SARS committee headed by Dayrit failed miserably to prevent the entry of SARS here. We wasted a golden opportunity to protect our people from this scourge because of greed and vanity. We had the advantage of being an archipelago and still being SARS-free but we wasted that. The SARS virus can't swim in the sea. There is only one way for it to enter the Philippines--via travelers. So we should have been more strict with travelers, especially those coming from SARS-infected countries, as other more responsible countries have done.
So the undermanned and overworked Bureau of Quarantine relied mainly on the voluntary declaration of incoming passengers if they feel any of the SARS symptoms, and of taking their temperature to see if they have any fever.
But you cannot rely on the honestly of travelers who don't want to be quarantined and lose time. If our supposedly responsible congressmen, alleged leaders of our nation, refused to be quarantined when they returned from a junket to China, what more the ordinary traveler? It is human nature.
As for the fever, not having it is not a guarantee that a person is not a carrier, as shown by the case of Adela Catalon, who died of SARS after infecting her father (who also died of it) and possibly hundreds of others who may now be infecting more people. Adela, a Filipino caregiver, came from Toronto, Canada, where there is an outbreak of SARS, and "JP," now quarantined in Cebu, came from Hong Kong where she worked as a domestic helper.
The quarantine people at the airport should have paid them more attention, coming as they were from SARS-infected countries, but they breezed through the screening because they had no fever and they didn't declare any SARS symptoms.
As it turned out, they were already infected with the virus. Now the Philippines is officially known in the whole world as "SARS-infected" which today is equivalent to being a leper in the old days. Libya has already banned Filipino workers from entering its borders. We can expect other countries to do the same.
The effort is now to contain the outbreak here. Fine. But as long as the same ineffective measures are used at the ports of entry, the chances of more SARS cases slipping through the screening process increases. At least 70,000 travelers enter through the Ninoy Aquino International Airport every day, not including the Cebu and Laoag airports and the seaports. By the law of averages, more SARS cases are bound to slip through.
Why don't we follow the example of Libya and Malaysia of temporarily banning the entry of travelers from SARS-infected countries? somebody has asked. The presidential committee pussyfoots. It is afraid to offend the affected countries. Gordon was shown on TV as saying in effect: "China is a big country. We cannot afford to offend it." But the real reason, I suspect, is that China, Hong Kong and Singapore are the fourth, fifth and sixth tourist markets of the Philippines. Gordon doesn't want the tourist arrivals to decline. Never mind if the whole Filipino nation will be put at risk, never mind if many Filipinos may die, Gordon needs the numbers of tourist arrivals to boast about during the senatorial campaign.
Gordon even belittles the SARS epidemic. "Look, there were some four million cases of pneumonia throughout the whole world in 1995," he said. "SARS has killed less than 400 people." Tell that to the families of SARS victims. And wait until SARS has run its course. It is just beginning. The number of deaths may be enough for callous-minded people, even Gordon.
What's wrong with being more strict with travelers from SARS-infected countries? It would be only temporary, only during the emergency. Other more responsible countries are already doing it to protect their citizens. Why not us?
We are visa-free for certain countries, particularly those belonging to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. But we can temporarily change the policy during this emergency to require visas. And then our embassies and consulates can more carefully screen travelers wanting to come to the Philippines.
Our officials should spare no effort to protect our people.
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