| |
HK plays down pneumonia
fears
By Wong Kwok Wah and Janus Lam
HONG KONG - Public sector health workers in Hong
Kong are up in arms, claiming that they have
unnecessarily been exposed to danger as the price to pay
for the government trying desperately to allay the
public's fears over the spread of an atypical pneumonia
that has claimed at least nine lives world-wide.
In the face of a possible epidemic outbreak of
what has been labeled severe acute respiratory syndrome
(SARS), the Hong Kong government is advising its medical
staff to take no chances, while at the same time telling
its citizens and the world that there is nothing to
worry about. Angry doctors and nurses gathered on Monday
at the partly-closed Prince of Wales Hospital to voice
their protest against the government's handling of the
situation.
The president of the Public Doctors'
Association, Dr Leung Ka-lau, has described the
situation in Hong Kong as "red light", without giving
further details. He criticized the government for
misleading the public into believing that Hong Kong was
in the "yellow light" stage.
A directorate-rank
government doctor, however, told Asia Times Online that
all medical and health personnel were being instructed
to take all measures to avoid contracting the disease
from their patients. This includes basic protective
measures, including wearing face masks and gloves. "Any
patient has to be assumed of be carrying the disease,
for we simply do not know how far it has gone within the
community," said the senior doctor.
This is at
odds with the apparent position presented by the
government's medical chief. "There is no indication of
any unusual pneumonia in Hong Kong," Secretary for
Health, Welfare and Food, Yeoh Eng-kiong, has been
preaching since news of the killer pneumonia broke last
Wednesday.
At first it was acknowledged that
dozens of medical staffers at the Prince of Wales
Hospital had suddenly contracted pneumonia, possibly
from an American businessman flown in from Hanoi. The
patient eventually died. Then the number of staffers
infected grew so fast that non-emergency services at the
hospital had to be suspended.
"The horrible part
of this disease is the cluster effect," said the
directorate-rank government doctor, pointing out that
many people in a concentrated environment had contracted
the disease quickly.
Apparently conscious of the
possible adverse impact on Hong Kong's tourism industry,
Yeoh has urged the media not to sensationalize reporting
on the epidemic. He said that Hong Kong residents should
not panic over the disease because "there is no reason
for that".
Another issue that the government is
avoiding is the source of the epidemic, with many
reports saying that it is across the border in Guangdong
province.
Official media in southern China have
claimed that all cases of pneumonia are under control,
and that no new ones have been reported since Monday
last week. The official media in Guangdong, meanwhile,
have come short of reporting on the spread of the
disease in Hong Kong over the past days, obviously under
pressure from the propaganda units. This, as usual, only
invites suspicion.
The World Health Organization
(WHO) has declared SARS a worldwide health threat, with
more than 400 people in countries on three continents
infected in less than a month. It appears that the
current outbreak was preceded by one last year in
southern China of what seems to be the same infection,
which killed five people.
Monday's Washington
Post reported that the Chinese government has provided
WHO with a report stating that SARS originated in
southern China in November and peaked a month ago
locally. Epidemiologists suspect that it is the same
deadly pneumonia-like illness seen over the past two
weeks in Hong Kong, Vietnam, Canada, Germany, Thailand,
Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia, the
Post reported.
The first outbreak of SARS in or
around China's Guangdong province last November
triggered a panic as well as a shopping rush on items
such as face masks, medicines and vinegar, which Chinese
boil as a disinfectant. The drug firm Roche recorded hot
sales of its medicine Tamiflu, which sold out in
Guangdong stores. The Guangdong government warned Roche
that it would be severely punished should it be found to
be fanning rumors of a pneumonia outbreak.
What
is SARS? This is a question that epidemiologists and
health officials have yet to answer, a fact that has
helped fan the flames of global panic, especially in
Asia. Severe acute respiratory syndrome is an atypical
pneumonia the cause of which has not yet been
determined. It has spread to countries in Asia, Europe
and North America through the global transportation
infrastructure. It was in essence an unknown disease
before February 26 and has been linked only in the past
few days to last year's outbreak in Guangdong. There are
no known effective treatments for the infection.
Those infected with SARS are generally diagnosed
as having been infected if they exhibit a high fever
over 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit); one
or more respiratory symptom - including coughing,
shortness of breath or difficulty in breathing - and
have been exposed to a person with SARS or visited a
region that has documented SARS infections.
While WHO has yet to determine essential
information regarding SARS, it announced on Monday that
the infection "seems amenable to treatment". However, a
Chinese Health Ministry report released by WHO said
"antibiotics did not have an obvious effect" on patients
in Guangdong.
But, the Chinese report said, "the
patients are being cured one by one". Beijing has
maintained that in China there have been 305 cases, with
five fatalities since November.
Because of the
spread of SARS to numerous countries in a brief period
of time, WHO has issued emergency warnings for travelers
and airlines. More than 400 cases have been reported by
health agencies around the world. There were fewer than
100 cases just a week ago.
Generally speaking,
air travel is beneficial to the world, but this rapid
outbreak and global spread of SARS indicates how
convenient the shrinking of the world is for viruses -
SARS is believed to be a virus - in their quest for new
hosts. A partial timeline of the spread of SARS
illustrates this point.
The initial case of the
second, non-Chinese outbreak was a man who was admitted
to a hospital in Hanoi on February 26. By this past
weekend 46 more cases had been reported in Vietnam. Two
patients have already died and five were on ventilators
as this article was written. The original Vietnam case
was transferred to Hong Kong, where at least seven
health-care workers were infected before he died last
Thursday. The previous day, 20 health workers in Hong
Kong had developed similar symptoms. By the weekend,
more than 100 cases had been reported in Hong Kong
alone.
Three people flew from Hong Kong to
Singapore carrying the bug, and spread it to 16 more. A
Singapore health worker flew to New York and on to
Frankfurt, feeling ill on the flight. German health
officials placed the person in quarantine. Another
person, who had been in close contact with the original
case in Vietnam, flew from Hanoi to Bangkok and was
hospitalized in Thailand, where the patient died, but no
other cases were reported through Sunday. It is hoped
that Germany and Thailand both acted quickly enough to
prevent further spread of the infection.
Epidemiologists from the US Centers for Disease
Control flew to Hanoi over the weekend to investigate,
and samples have been flown back to CDC headquarters in
Atlanta for testing. WHO also suggested that if someone
shows these symptoms in the air, everyone else on the
flight should keep track of their contacts with other
people for the next couple weeks in case they later come
down with it. SARS appears to become evident in new
victims within a week of infection, suggesting that
anyone who is still well two weeks after international
travel may be off the hook.
The spread of the
disease has alarmed travelers. At Hong Kong
International Airport this past weekend many people
arriving from Taiwan, Singapore and elsewhere were
wearing surgical masks. Hong Kong, where tourism is an
important part of the currently sluggish economy, is
particularly worried about the effects of SARS on its
economy - as are popular Southeast Asian tourist
destinations such as Vietnam and Thailand.
The
Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) has called for
"accurate, restrained and sensible travel advice and
media reporting", on SARS. PATA's policy position on
SARS is that the travel industry in the Asia-Pacific
Asia region should follow the official advice of the
WHO. "However, all authorities issuing travel health
advisories, and all media outlets covering the story,
should be as geographically specific as possible, and
not make alarmist general statements about the region.
PATA requests that all issuing authorities avoid
using generic phrases such as "Asia", "ASEAN",
"Southeast Asia" or "Asia Pacific". Instead, advisories
and media reporting should point out that outbreaks have
been confined to a handful of very specific urban
centers, and within those centers, the vast majority of
cases, or suspected cases, have been confined to
hospital care staff or family members in "close contact"
with the infected.
The WHO defines "close
contact" as "having cared for, having lived with, or
having had direct contact with respiratory secretions
and body fluids of a person with SARS".
Thai
Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said
examination was under way of a flu patient who died last
week at Bangkok's Siriraj Hospital, a death suspected to
have been caused by SARS. The results will be available
this week, she added.
Dr Virasak
Jongsuwiwatwong, of southern Thailand's Prince Songkhla
University's faculty of medicine, appealed to the public
not to panic about the mysterious disease. He said he
expected that efficient control measures would be taken
soon after it was identified.
Despite the recent
wave of panic, it is not likely that SARS will turn out
to be a global epidemic. Its economic effects will
undoubtedly linger long after the illness itself
disappears from the news.
(Additional reporting
by Chris Horton in Bangkok)
(©2003 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
