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China's 'warriors in white
coats'
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - In a throwback to its patriotic
sanitation campaigns of the 1950s, China's Communist
Party is now waging a "People's War" on curbing the
spread of deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome
(SARS) here in the capital and the rest of the country.
Chinese leaders have deployed 1,200 military
medical staff to help Beijing authorities fight the
escalating outbreak of the virus, which is believed to
have originated in southern China and has now infected
more than 5,800 people in some 30 countries.
Beijing's neighborhood committees, which are
Communist Party-run groups, and the police have been
enlisted to keep watch over some 12,000 people being
held under quarantine.
The state-run media are
in full gear, recycling stock propaganda phrases that
hail the heroism of the top leadership, the selfless
devotion of the "warriors in white coats" and the
decisive contributions of the People 's Liberation Army,
especially its research laboratories.
The
epidemic has now spread to 26 of China's 31 provinces
and autonomous regions, prompting the government to
launch a mass mobilization campaign calling on everyone
in this country of 1.3 billion people to take part in
the "SARS battle".
The Communist Party was
undoubtedly successful at 1950s sanitation campaigns
that almost wiped out syphilis and leprosy and
inoculation drives against smallpox, typhoid,
diphtheria, infantile paralysis, whooping cough and
measles.
But with strict quarantine measures in
place, stock trading suspended and entertainment and
recreation curtailed, the Chinese capital is beginning
to count not just the economic fallout but also the
emotional cost of its draconian measures to curb the
SARS outbreak.
Economic pundits have been busy
revising their growth forecasts for China's miracle
economy, which posted a gross domestic product growth of
8 percent last year. China has closed its two stock
exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen for the May 1-12
period as the government tries to keep SARS out of
crowded dealing rooms.
The Guangdong Trade Fair,
China's biggest, ended a day ahead of schedule, with
orders worth only US$4.42 billion, just a quarter of the
$16.8 billion booked last year.
A group of
academics at Beijing University now predicts that SARS
will cut between one and two percentage points from
China's economic growth in 2003.
Peking
University's China Center for Economic Research also
estimates that the country's tourism - both domestic and
foreign - will lose about 140 billion yuan ($16.8
billion).
With the spread of SARS threatening to
spin out of control, the government earlier shortened
the seven-day-long May Day holiday to five days and
advised people against traveling. Last year, 87 million
Chinese spent 33 billion yuan shopping and touring
during the traditional holiday.
By contrast, May
Day this year is a holiday spent at home. Shopping
centers in Beijing are forbidden from holding sales
promotions. Public gatherings are discouraged and some
health experts have advised newlywed couples to postpone
having babies.
Outings in the surrounding
countryside of Beijing have also been banned for fear
that visitors from the capital might spread the disease
in the impoverished rural parts of the country. "Even
swimming pools have been closed," fumed Zhang Shengyun,
a businessman who wondered how to kill the holiday time.
At least three psychological counseling hotlines
have been set up to help nervous Beijing residents deal
with what specialists term the "SARS fear" syndrome.
"I received 20 phone calls in the last hour,"
said a staffer for the hotline set up by the
Psychological Health Institute who gave her name as Liu.
"To quarantined people who call, I tried to explain that
isolation was not something aimed at them personally but
a measure taken against the spread of the disease."
More than 42 percent of Beijing residents feel
increasingly terrified by the spread of the disease,
according to an official survey conducted by the Chinese
Socio-economic Survey and Information Research
Institute.
One of Beijing's biggest problems is
that public confidence in the health system has
plummeted. Many residents avoid going to hospitals,
fearing that being held in quarantine with other
suspected cases runs a greater risk of getting infected.
More than 100 SARS-treatment medical
institutions have been cordoned off in Beijing as acting
mayor Wang Qishan admitted that they were epicenters of
epidemic.
Another 13.4 percent of people
surveyed by the government think-tank said they were
unsure whether they approved of the strict authoritarian
measures deployed to control the epidemic.
On
Thursday, the Geneva-based World Health Organization
(WHO) said China might need extra help for hospitals in
the country's poorer western and northern provinces,
including facilities to isolate and treat SARS patients.
Beyond ensuring social stability in a
disease-stricken capital, Beijing leaders might also
have reasons to worry for their own health. A front-page
article in Friday's Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend
newspaper revealed that SARS had infiltrated the Central
Party School, where 1,600 party officials are trained
for top positions inside the government and the
Communist Party.
Quoting an unidentified
professor at the school, the paper said a librarian had
been confirmed as SARS-infected and areas and people
inside the school have been placed under quarantine.
China reported 11 new SARS deaths and 187 new
cases by Thursday morning, the Health Ministry said.
Seven of the new deaths were in Beijing. The capital
also accounted for 122 of the new cases.
"The
next few months will prove crucial in the attempt to
contain SARS worldwide, which now greatly depends on
whether the disease can be controlled in China," a WHO
update said on Thursday.
(Inter Press
Service)
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