Sars: What's going on in China?

2003-04-15 22:33

New York - China's response to SARS is key to whether the deadly pneumonia will become a persistent infectious disease such as malaria or tuberculosis, a World Health Organisation expert said on Tuesday.

"The jury is still out on whether this will occur, and that depends on a lot on understanding what is going on in China," WHO doctor David Heymann told a news conference.

Heymann is WHO director for communicable diseases and was at the United Nations to brief members of the UN Economic and Social Council.

China and Hong Kong account for more than two-thirds of the 3 529 cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) and for 121 of the 152 deaths reported worldwide since the outbreak of the disease in November.

The Chinese government has been accused of trying to cover up the outbreak and criticised for failing to act more swiftly to contain Sars.

But Heymann said it had made "quite incredible progress" since the WHO's global alert on March 12 recommending that patients with atypical symptoms be treated in isolation with special "barrier" precautions for medical staff.

On April 2, the WHO advised tourists and business people not to travel to Hong Kong and Guangdong Province in China.

It also recommended screening for Sars at airports in countries where there are signs of epidemic, such as Canada, which has 287 cases and 13 fatalities, and Singapore, which has 158 and 10 deaths.

"When we made the alert we hoped that - if the disease had not become widespread in the world or in Asia - it might be that we could contain it and it would not become another endemic disease such as tuberculosis or malaria," Heymann said.

"What's the future for this disease? We won't know until we understand what is going on in China," he added.

"We believe that now we are a full partner with China in the investigations, and we believe that information will come in the next three or four weeks."

But he acknowledged that there might be a problem with China's military hospitals, which other WHO officials said remained out of bounds to their investigators.

- AFX