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Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
| Secret of SARS control: Follow those rumors |
Thomas Crampton/IHT International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, June 3, 2003 |
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MANILA To call Rosanne Muller the office gossip queen would not be an insult. It is, in fact, her job. Working from a corner desk in the SARS war room of the World Health Organization's Asian headquarters, Muller spends each day finding, chasing and spreading rumors on the disease.
"This is the perfect job for me," Muller said. "I do actually have a history in gossip." In addition to being medical doctor now studying for a specialized degree in field epidemiology, Muller wrote the weekly gossip column for a Red Cross publication last year in India.
"Most of the publication was to boost morale at the Red Cross," Muller said. "But my column told what was really happening: Who was seen with whom and that sort of thing." Odd as it may seem, such gossip-gathering skills have played a crucial role in the global battle against SARS.
"Our first warnings about this disease came from rumors," said Hitoshi Oshitani, who heads the agency's communicable disease surveillance and response team for Asia. "Following rumors remains a very important task." Spread from southern China to 29 countries at the speed of a jumbo jet, this century's first international disease outbreak came to the attention of the World Health Organization through an e-mail rumor.
That anonymous message, sent to the agency's general e-mail address, turned up in Oshitani's in-box in Manila on Feb. 10, along with two others warning of a mysterious killer pneumonia spreading rapidly in southern China. The other messages came from a foreign consulate in the southern city of Guangzhou and the son of a retired WHO official in the same city.
"We hear rumors quite often," Oshitani said. "But it was very strange to get three e-mails on the same subject on the same day." Oshitani's attempts to follow up on the rumors through official channels led nowhere. At one point he spent five days in Beijing, waiting to see the government while rumors continued to arrive about the disease.
"We were extremely frustrated because we knew something was happening in Guangdong, but we didn't know what," Oshitani said. "When official sources do not provide information, you must gather knowledge wherever you can." The use of unofficial information has long been important in chasing disease outbreaks. The World Health Organization integrated informal information channels, including Internet chat rooms, into the organization's disease surveillance process more than five years ago. SARS, however, has been the first test of such a system on global scale.
"Rumors played a larger role in this outbreak than in any previous one," Muller said. "The lack of information from official sources combined with paranoia and modern technology to build the perfect rumor mill." A cursory glance around the agency's SARS war room shows the high regard disease hunters hold for rumors. While one board lists international personnel assignments and another shows official disease statistics, Muller works below a large white board marked "Rumors" on which she writes the latest gossip. The sources for rumors vary by country. Rumors in the Philippines often come via mobile phone text messages, while Chinese usually send notes in anonymous e-mails. For most countries, local media provide the prime source for rumors on the disease.
Muller chases up to a dozen rumors each day, often finding that the most absurd reports turn out to be true. "The most bizarre anonymous e-mail came from Beijing describing a mass evacuation of SARS patients from a hospital one hour before the visit of the WHO team," Muller said. "In the end, the report turned out to be absolutely true." The process of rumor chasing begins with the careful logging of information received, followed by laborious cross-checking. In the case of one rumor this week, Muller received information from a West European embassy about a report from an East European newspaper on a suspected SARS patient who had recently toured seven Asian countries. After getting a reliable version of the text, Muller forwarded the report to the WHO Asian field offices for follow-up information while sending a message requesting the East European government to investigate.
Prime questions regarding infected travelers include where they stayed when, and whether they had any known contact with a SARS-infected person.
The intention of spreading unconfirmed rumors is to find out where the disease might strike next so that timely warnings can be issued.
"Often the key to figuring out the reliability of rumors involves bringing together information from many sources," Muller said.
Muller immediately discounted rumors of a SARS case in India, for example, after checking the dates on which the patient had been in the city.
"The location and timing were wrong," Muller said. "We decided it was very unlikely to be a case of SARS." While only half of the rumors come true in most cases, the real situation in China followed rumors closely.
"China was different from other countries," Muller said. "The team followed up on as many rumors as possible and generally found them to be true." International Herald Tribune
 Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune
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