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SARS suspects: The new
outcasts
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK - With fear gripping East Asia over the
rapidly spreading atypical pneumonia that had killed 106
people as of Wednesday, a steady cough or few sneezes in
public can lead to immediate ostracism.
Or as
the airline staff on board Thailand's national carrier
are quickly learning, being identified as one who served
a flight from high-risk countries such as China or
Singapore is enough for them to be treated as outcasts.
"Thai people now look at us as if we were
ghosts," a male flight attendant wrote on a Thai Airways
website for the cabin crew, revealed a local daily
newspaper. "We are treated like the plague because of
poor communications and overreaction by the Thai
government."
But such treatment of people
"suspected" of having caught severe acute respiratory
syndrome (SARS) is not unique to Thailand. In Hong Kong,
hotels are turning away guests from mainland China.
In Singapore, health workers seen in public in
their white uniforms are being shunned because of news
reports that say that among those infected by the killer
virus are nurses and medical staff who have treated SARS
patients in East Asia.
According to the World
Health Organization (WHO), mainland China continued to
be the worst hit, with 1,280 cases and 53 deaths,
followed by Hong Kong, with 970 cases and 27 deaths.
Meanwhile Singapore had 118 cases and nine deaths, and
Canada 94 cases and 10 deaths.
Thailand, on the
other hand, had seven recorded cases and two
SARS-related deaths as of Wednesday.
"Ostracism
is becoming a reality. We need to do something more,"
said Bjorn Melgaard, the United Nations health agency's
representative in Thailand. "The WHO has guidelines for
those infected with SARS to follow."
Health
experts in the region are admitting that the panic now
in motion is being fueled by the fast-spreading nature
of SARS, which has, since it was announced to the world
in early March, spread to 20 countries. Currently, all
continents but Africa and Antarctica have had to handle
a SARS case.
There are more than 2,722 cases of
SARS worldwide to date.
A patient treated by a
WHO infectious-diseases expert in late February was the
one who attracted global attention. However, the roots
of this killer virus can be traced to China, where
officials had kept silent about the outbreak of a deadly
atypical pneumonia noticed in November in Guangdong
province.
Since SARS was detected, only 4
percent of those infected by it have died, experts point
out as they try to counter the panic around the disease.
By contrast, the Ebola fever that has been raging for
some years has been more deadly, with at least 90
percent of those infected dying from it.
But
this has done little to quell the panic and the
accompanying discrimination that people "suspected" of
SARS are experiencing.
It is more virulent than
what happened during the two previous occasions when
Asia was hit by killer diseases. They were the 1994
pneumonic plague that hit Surat, India, and the avian
flu that struck Hong Kong in mid-1997 through early
1998.
"This is because SARS is spreading
faster," said Melgaard.
When the
at-first-mysterious plague hit the western port city of
Surat, people fled by the thousands to nearby cities.
Masks were soon worn by people in these urban areas
given that 47 people died due to the plague.
However, similar panic did not surface when
reports appeared that the pneumonic plague had killed
four people in two of India's northern states - Himachal
Pradesh and Uttaranchal - in February last year.
Now in Thailand, some quarters are questioning
the government's role in contributing to the SARS panic
and the consequent discrimination some Thais are
experiencing.
The government has not met "public
expectations", declared The Nation, an English-language
daily newspaper, in an editorial on Sunday. "There was
no 'war room' or a unified leadership to handle the
crisis, which requires day-to-day articulation."
There is also fear among Thailand's public
health experts that further discrimination could force
people infected with SARS to stay away from visiting
hospitals out of fear of discrimination.
On
Monday, the Thai government addressed some of the
worries that have arisen since the SARS panic hit this
country this month, including the question over whether
one should wear or not wear a face mask to stay safe.
Masks are not necessary, Thai officials
asserted, a view backed by the WHO. According to the
Geneva-based UN agency, masks are best worn only by
those infected with SARS or those who suspect they are
infected with the virus, thus limiting the spread of the
disease.
"I don't want to see our whole nation
becoming unnecessarily worried about an illness," Prime
Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Monday.
As a
sign of the country's increasing confidence that it is
safe from local transmission of SARS - unlike China,
Hong Kong, Singapore or Vietnam - a concert featuring
the legendary British rock band the Rolling Stones is
scheduled to be held this week.
Yet that has not
quelled the prejudice faced by people either related to
or who have come into close contact with SARS patients.
On Tuesday, The Nation drew attention to the
discrimination suffered by the grandchildren of a Thai
man who died of SARS last week.
The
grandchildren have been "ostracized" by their community,
a provincial health inspector told the paper. "They
cannot earn a living now, as people dare not buy the
food they sell for fear of contracting the disease."
(Inter Press Service)
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