Chinese health minister sacked

2003-04-20 12:28

Beijing - China's Health Minister Zhang Wenkang and Beijing mayor Meng Xuenong have been sacked from their top Communist Party positions, state press said on Sunday.

Zhang was removed as chief of the Communist Party branch for the ministry of health, the Xinhua news agency said.

Meng was fired as deputy secretary of the Communist Party's Beijing Municipal Committee.

On Sunday China caved in to international pressure by admitting that there were 346 Sars cases in Beijing, an additional 402 "suspected" cases and that 18 people had died from the virus in the capital.

It also announced the cancellation of the traditional week-long May Day holiday to prevent the spread of the disease, costing the tourism and transport industries millions of dollars.

Prior to the announcement, authorities had claimed there were just 44 cases in Beijing with four fatalities.

Of the 346 confirmed cases five were foreigners, although their nationalities were not mentioned.

Sars cases dribbling in every day

The nationwide death toll from Sars was raised to 79 with 1 807 confirmed cases of the illness, as of April 18. An additional seven cases in Beijing on Saturday brought the tally to 1 814, and the total in Beijing to 346.

So far 1 165 patients have recovered.

Vice health minister Gao Qiang told a press conference that the State Council had dispatched a team to every hospital in Beijing to check the real total number of cases.

This type of investigation, however, has yet to be carried out anywhere else in China, where Sars cases are dribbling in every day.

China made the admission after intense international pressure, particularly from the World Health Organisation, which last week accused the government of covering up the extent of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in the capital.

The WHO welcomed developments on Sunday, but expressed concern that much of the country had yet to undego such investigations, particularly poor, rural areas where facilities and reporting systems pale in comparison to the capital.

Beijing accounts for just one percent of China's total population.

"We are very pleased," Jeff McFarland, a member of the WHO team of experts probing the extent of the disease in the Chinese capital, said.

"This now includes military hospitals and we have been told they they will now report figures daily. It means all hospitals are represented."

Probe in Shanghai due to start

Gao said that of the total, 353 people were being treated in military hospitals, 235 in local hospitals and 153 in "other" hospitals.

"Clearly this system (of opening up) has just started," said McFarland.

"We will have to wait and see how it goes in other places. Just getting the military hospitals in the system here is important.

"But of course it is a concern for everyone, everywhere that WHO has not visited the rural areas."

The WHO has so far been allowed to send a team to southern Guangdong province, where the illness was believed to have originated in November, and Beijing.

A probe in Shanghai is due to start on Monday.

Chinese health official Zhu Qingsheng added that the WHO may also be allowed into "some western regions".

When asked if China could expect much higher figures from the rest of the country Gao said: "I can only say that supervisory groups have been sent to some areas and once underreporting has been detected we will inform you."

The health ministry said Sars was underreported in Beijing because it was a new disease and it had proven difficult to come up with a diagnosis.

It also said Beijing had a lot of hospitals and patients were scattered across the city.

"After Sars erupted, the health ministry did not establish a unified system for collecting, compiling and reporting data on the epidemic in a timely fashion," said Gao.

"These problems with our work should be honestly redressed and we should draw experiences and lessons from this and effectively improve our work."

President Hu Jintao and other top leaders on Thursday stepped into the growing crisis, demanding all levels of government fully report the epidemic.

A major casualty of the government's new findings was the May day holiday.

Gao said it had been canceled to "prevent the massive flow of people that could lead to the spread of Sars".

The holidays were due to start on May 1 and run to May 7 when millions of Chinese were expected to take to the skies, roads and railways. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA